


»jV,'. 'Iv/V .',.■,.,"' Y*/ 






^^^•li^Hlr"''' 




V'.v;'ii';7V'y. 



' >.»'C', \r ■ 









'^^ V*' 



.^^ 



^«-. 



■^^- -'%: 






.#' .'".:''"/'b. 






^ .#' ,.< 









.-> '/-v 






.^ -%. ^*- 



« I "V * \\ 






^*^ 









.aO- 



// ^ 



c^ 



^ * , -^ * 8 > A 



xX^' o^ 



v-iv' 



%^^- 






:/%"'^-"/\^:4^^.'%'^"\o- 



y^ v^ 



rl -^ :fc .- = N^^ 









^^/' 






'V/^ 
























^^%^ 
.^ % 



^■^•.^ 






,-{s^ 












- A^^"^^ 



V' 



'*A V*' 









■S^^. 



.^" 






.0^^ 



A^ 



,-^^ .^ 




mrK.—/.af.Sm,/,- 0/ .1 />,),■//»» ,,/ „ M,,/, „j / ■„^.„„„ „„,/ 

by AMjyHshH HrrriuaH, Nim its ,<wm smiiy-is ,h 

i"7"- Tim Map, «/!,.« wkieA l/ir /xkHioh 1^ Cp, /f,„/„/>rii, ,1/ 

mhamr to Dilawar, liav, h (i<nr,ll,iu,mm, m 

I lived hv 11: /■■„rn,tr,ir nml /^iifi/:</l,-./ '> f ,.„,/,.„ 



'fflV-''- -^'JA'i^s^ 



PHOTO. UTH. BYAHOENaCO.BALT/MORE MO 

d Charles Lord Baltimore 



' ^Um^ 




SoutU Bounds of M.viyUnd 



/■'•I, -SI nil/,- of Ihf .\[af> rHfrr(d to in tlif agn 



igrcnitnt h.lw.cH tli, />,, 
in rrlation to Ihf Boundary U„(, 



ilunl.s I,.,, I /.■a/In. 



V 



,'■ ■■ 






!| 



THE LORDS BALTIMORE 



AND THE 



MARYLAND PALATINATE 



SIX LECTURES ON 

MARYLAND COLONIAL HISTORY 

DELIVERED BEFORE 

The Johns Hopkins University 

IN THE YEAR 1902 



BY 

CLAYTON COLMAN HALL, LL. B., A. M. 



BALTIMORE 

JOHN MUKPHY COMPANY 

1902 






THE LIBRARY OF 
CONGRESS, 

Two OOP.E8 RECEfVED 

DEC. 24 1902 

f^COPVfMQHT eHTBY 

'5 ^ i^ V if 
C©PY A. 



Copyright, 1902, 

BY 

Clayton Colman Hall. 



All rights reserved. 



TO 

MY WIFE 

WITHOUT WHOSE ENCOURAGEMENT 
THESE LECTURES WOULD NOT HAVE BEEN UNDERTAKEN 

THIS BOOK IS DEDICATED 



PREFACE. 



The following lectures upon Maryland Colonial 
History, delivered before the Johns Hopkins Univer- 
sity, in McCoy Hall, during the months of February 
and March, 1902, were provided for by the Mary- 
land Society of the Colonial Dames of America, while 
the particular subject was selected, and the lecturer 
appointed, by the Faculty of the University. The 
lectures were open to the public. 

They are six in number, and the time for the 
delivery of each lecture was limited to one hour. The 
time, — six hours in all, — did not admit of the pre- 
sentation of a complete history of the colonial period 
of Maryland. All that has been attempted is to present 
a brief sketch of the lives and characters of the 
several Barons of Baltimore, Lords Proprietary of 
Maryland, together with a review of the salient facts 
connected with the history of the Province of Mary- 
land, and the relations of the Proprietaries thereto. 

Maryland was not the only one of the English colonies 
in America which had a proprietary government ; but 
its peculiar constitution as a Palatinate Province, 
presents many special features of interest to the stu- 
dent of political institutions; and the establishment 
in the Province of Religious Toleration, in an age of 
intolerance, gives special lustre to the story. While 
the limitations of time were such as to require brevity 

vii 



Viii PREFACE. 

and condensation in treatment, it is hoped that in 
these lectures no material facts, necessary for a true 
and intelligible presentation of the subject, have 
escaped mention. 

In offering them, through the press, to a larger 
audience than that which was from week to week 
assembled in McCoy Hall, it has been thought better 
to adhere to the original form in which they were 
prepared for oral delivery, rather than to recast them 
in a form that would be appropriate, if the object were 
to present a complete historical narrative of the period 
under consideration. 

Interest in the colonial history of Maryland, and 
facilities for its study have both been greatly extended 
within the last quarter of a century. 

Thirty years ago the principal books which had 
been published relating specially to this subject were 
Bozman's History of Maryland, in two volumes, and 
McMahon's Historical View of the Government of Mary- 
land, of which one volume only was ever published. 

Of these, the former covers only the period from the 
settlement of the Province until the year 1660. This 
history was written by John Leeds Bozman of Talbot 
County, and the first volume, comprising the intro- 
duction, was published in 1811 ; but the entire work 
was not printed until 1837. Its compilation evinces 
learning and judgment, and derived as the material 
was, from manuscript records scattered through various 
public offices, ill-arranged and almost wholly without 
index, it gives evidence of a most laborious and inde- 
fatigable industry. 

The second book mentioned, Volume I., of an His- 



PREFACE. IX 

torical View of the Government of Maryland, by John 
V. L. McMahon, appeared in 1831. This book is well 
worthy of the distinguished name and fame of its 
author. 

It was not until 1879 that Scharf 's History of Mary- 
land (in three volumes) was published. It contains 
a great amount of valuable material, which has not, 
however, been always judiciously selected or scientifi- 
cally arranged. The index to this work is a curiosity of 
confusion. The value of this history would be greatly 
enhanced by the addition of an index rationally 
constructed. 

But it is within still more recent years that the 
material for the study of Maryland's colonial history 
has been made more easily available, and interest in 
the subject has been awakened, partly through the 
influence of the various patriotic societies, and partly 
by reason of the greater attention which it has received 
at the hands of students. 

A great advance was made in 1882, when an Act 
was passed by the Legislature of Maryland making 
the Maryland Historical Society the depository and 
custodian of all the State Archives belonging to the 
period prior to the acknowledgment by Great Britain 
of the independence of the United States; and at 
the same time providing for the arrangement and 
cataloguing of the papers by the Society, for the publi- 
cation of such as should be found of historical interest, 
and for keeping the records in such manner that 
they should be accessible to citizens of the State. 
Twenty-one volumes of the Archives have now been 
printed, all of them under the editorial supervision of 



k 



X PREFACE. 

Dr. William Hand Browne, with the exception of 
Volume XVIII, which contains the muster rolls of 
the Maryland troops in the revolutionary army. Of 
the portion thus far published, the volumes to which 
reference has specially been made in the preparation 
of these lectures, are 

Council Proceedings, 1636-1697, six volumes. 

Assembly Proceedings, 1637/8-1697, five volumes. 

Correspondence of Governor Sharpe, three volumes. 

In 1888, the Maryland Historical Society acquired 
by purchase from a descendant of the last Lord Balti- 
more, a large and valuable collection of documents 
and correspondence relating to and illustrative of the 
history of the Calvert family, the settlement of Mary- 
land, and the relations between the Lords Baltimore 
and the Province. Subsequently additional papers of 
similar character were acquired from another source. 

A number of these papers have been published by 
the Society in three separate volumes, designated as 
Calvert Papers, No. 1 , No. 2, and No. 3, respectively ; 
but many of them are still in manuscript only. 

In the collection of Archives belonging to the 
State, — notwithstanding the loss and waste to which 
they have, from time to time, been exposed, — and, the 
collections of Calvert papers belonging to the Maryland 
Historical Society, are probably contained records 
relating to the colonial period of Maryland's history, 
more comprehensive than the existing records of any 
other of the original thirteen colonies. The great 
seal of the Lord Proprietary mentioned on page 141, 
which is preserved in the Land Office at Annapolis, 
was cut in silver in 1648, by order of Cecilius, Lord 



PREFACE. XI 

Baltimore, to replace one lost or stolen during the 
Ingle rebellion. It is believed to be the oldest relic 
of the kind in this country. 

With a portion of these early records already pub- 
lished, and all of them placed within the reach of 
students, great encouragement has been given to the 
study of Maryland's colonial history within the last 
twenty years, and many facts previously unknown to 
students of history, have been brought to light. 

Of comparatively recent publications, mention should 
be made of two, quite small, but admirable, books by 
Dr. William Hand Browne, Professor of English 
Literature in the Johns Hopkins University. They 
are, Maryland, the History of a Palatinate, published 
in 1884, in the American Commonwealth series ; and 
George and Cecilius Calvert, Lords Baltimore, pub- 
lished in 1890, in the Makers of America series. 

In 1901, a very excellent book appeared, — Maryland 
as a Proprietary Province, — by Dr. N. D. Mereness of 
Columbia University. This book is very accurate and 
is written in an impartial and philosophical spirit. It 
contains a very good bibliography. 

In Fiske's Old Virginia and her Neighbors, there 
are several interesting chapters devoted to Maryland ; 
but this distinguished historian, singularly enough, fell 
into several errors as to matters of fact. 

Among the occasional publications of the Maryland 
Historical Society, and the Johns Hopkins University 
(Studies in Historical and Political Science), there 
have been a number of monographs upon special sub- 
jects connected with the colonial history of Maryland, 
which have been found valuable in the preparation of 



xii PREFACE. 

these lectures. Those entitled to special mention are 
the following numbers of the Fund Publications of 
the Historical Society: — 
^ No. 8. The Lords Baltimore, by Rev. John G. 
Morris, D. D. 

No. 15. A Character of the Province of Maryland, 
by George Alsop. (Reprint.) 

No. 18. The Foundation of Maryland, and the Ori- 
gin of the Act concerning Religion, by General Bradley 
T. Johnson. 

No. 20. Sir George Calvert, Baron of Baltimore, 
by L. W. Wilhelm, Ph. D. 

No. 30. The Dismemberment of Maryland, by G. W. 
Archer, M. D. 

No. 36. Early Maryland Poetry, edited by Bernard 
C, Steiner, Ph. D. 

Among the publications of the Johns Hopkins Uni- 
versity (Studies in Historical and Political Science), 
special mention should be made of Old Maryland 
Manors, by John Hemsley Johnson, A. B., and of the 
Life arid Administration of Sir Robert Eden, by 
Bernard C. Steiner, Ph. D. 

It has not seemed worth while to enumerate here 
the various other sources which have been availed 
of, unpublished manuscripts, and casual references in 
various works, such as Walpole's Letters, Carlyle's 
History of Frederick the Great, etc. ; but it ha& been 
sought to give, wherever occasion demanded, proper 
reference to authority, by means of footnotes printed 
with the text. 

The material for the personal sketches of the several 
Lords Baltimore, has been gathered from widely scattered 



PREFACE. xiii 

Sources, including correspondence and other unpub- 
lished manuscripts among the Calvert papers in the 
possession of the Maryland Historical Society. 

Permission to make use of those manuscripts in 
the preparation of these lectures, and to reproduce in 
this publication the maps illustrative of the boundary 
dispute between the Lords Baltimore and the Penns, 
which were printed in Calvert Papers, No. 2, was 
courteously given by that Society. 



CONTEl^TS. 



LECTUKE I. 

George Calvert, first Lord Baltimore, 1580-1632. 
Secretary to the Privy Council ; Member of Parlia- 
ment ; One of the principal Secretaries of State ; 
Member of the Privy Council ; Advocate of the 
Spanish match ; Converted to the Eoman Catholic 
Faith ; Proprietary of Avalon ; Projector of the 
Maryland Colony 1 

LECTURE II. 

Cecilius, second Lord Baltimore and first Pro- 
prietary OF Maryland, 1606-1675. 
Charter of Maryland ; Instructions to Colonists ; 
Opposition of Claiborne ; Conflict with Jesuits ; 
Ingle's Rebellion ; Attitude in respect to Relig- 
ion ; Intervention of Commissioners of Parliament ; 
Fendair s treachery ; Appointment of son and heir 
apparent as Governor 28 

LECTURE III. 

Religious Toleration in Maryland. 

Toleration the policy of Cecilius from the begin- 
ning ; Draft of laws sent out by the Proprietary ; 
Action of the Assembly thereon ; The Act con- 
cerning Religion, 1649 ; Various opinions as to 
its origin ; Influence of Cecilius, Lord Baltimore ; 
I Sentiment in New England and Virginia in respect 
i XV 



XVI CONTENTS. 

to religious differences ; The Maryland Act compared 
with the views expressed by Sir Thomas More in 
Utopia; Explanation of the motives of Cecilius by 
his son ; Another Act concerning Keligion, 1654 ; 
Subsequent legislation on this subject 66 

LECTUEE IV. 

Charles, third Lord Baltimore and second Pro- 
prietary OF Maryland, 1630-1714/5 (Feb- 

. RUARY 20). 

Administers government in person ; Indian outbreak ; 
Insurrection under Davis and Pate ; Boundary dis- 
pute with William Penn ; Return to England ; So- 
called Protestant Revolution ; Deprived of Govern- 
ment ; Wrongfully attainted of treason in Ireland. 

Royal Governors. 

Administration of Province under Governors ap- 
pointed by the Crown, 1692-1715 ; Establishment of 
the Church of England 99 

LECTURE V. 

Benedict Leonard, fourth Lord Baltimore and 
third Proprietary of Maryland, 1678-1715 
(April 5). 
Conformed to the Church of England ; Held title 
but six weeks. 

Charles, fifth Lord Baltimore and fourth Pro- 
prietary OF Maryland, 1699-1751. 
Restoration of the Proprietary Government in 
Maryland ; Friend of Frederick, Prince of Wales ; 
Travels on the Continent ; Visit to Frederick (the 
Great), Crown Prince of Prussia ; Visit to Mary- 
land ; Conflicts with Assembly ; Remarkable agree- 
ment with the Penns. 



CONTENTS. xvu 

Frederick, sixth Lord Baltimore and fifth Pro- 
prietary OF Maryland, 1732-1771. 
Travels abroad ; Literary essays ; Trial upon a 
criminal charge ; Final settlement of the boundary 
dispute ; Mason and Dixon's Line ; Devise of Pro- 
vince to Henry Harford ; Portents of American 
Kevolution 138 

LECTURE VI. 

Manners and Customs, Social and Economic Con- 
ditions IN Maryland during the Colonial 
Period. 
Early conditions those of a pioneer settlement ; . 
Effect of tobacco culture ; Various accounts of the 
character of the Province ; Currency and taxation ; 
Labor conditions — Indented servants, convicts, 
and African slaves ; German settlements in West- 
ern Maryland ; Effect upon agriculture ; Frontier 
rangers ; Border strife ; Development of social 
and political life ; Education ; Annapolis a place 
of luxury and gaiety ; Cradle of the theatre in 
y America 174 



THE LORDS BALTIMORE 

AND THE 

MARYLAND PALATINATE 



LECTURE I. 

George Calvert, First Lord Baltimore. 



THE special subject proposed for the present 
course of lectures upon Maryland colonial 
history in the rnvitation for their delivery, was 
" The Lords Baltimore/' with wide latitude of 
choice left to the lecturer as to the manner in which 
the subject should be treated, — whether to attempt 
to present some biographical account of the several 
Barons of Baltimore, or to consider chiefly the 
history of their actions as Lords Proprietary of 
Maryland. 

What is known or is now ascertainable in relation 
to what may be called the personal history of the 
six persons who successively bore the title of Baron 
of Baltimore differs very widely both in amount and 
interest in the case of the several individuals. The 
lives of some of them were much more conspicuous 

1 



2 THE LORDS BALTIMORE AND 

and eventful than those of others ; and while the 
facts that can now be gathered in respect to some 
are reasonably full, in respect to others the records 
are very meagre. Some are known, and their char- 
acters are to be judged, chiefly through their relations 
with the Maryland Province, and the record which 
has been preserved of their public acts in its found- 
ing, upbuilding and government ; in communications 
to the provincial Governors, their messages to the 
houses of Assembly, and their general attitude to- 
wards legislation in the Province, and the policy to 
be pursued in its administration. Such being the 
case, any account of the Lords Baltimore would 
necessarily involve frequent reference to the course 
of events in the Province. 

Recognizing then the fact that the subject for 
these lectures Avas selected on account of the intimate 
association of the Lords Proprietary with the colonial 
history of Maryland, and that the illustration of the 
latter was the object sought, quite as much as an 
account of the lives of the Barons of Baltimore, it 
has seemed that the purpose would be better ex- 
pressed by adopting the title " The Lords Baltimore 
and the Maryland Palatinate ^' as the designation of 
the subject. 

It may be well to note that the title Baron of 
Baltimore in the Kingdom of Ireland was created 
in 1625, and conferred by James I. on George 
Calvert, first Baron. This was seven years before 
the grant of the Maryland charter, and some years 



THE MARYLAND PALATINATE 6 

before the arrival hither of the first colonists. The 
title became extinct in 1771, upon the death of 
Frederick, sixth Baron, five years before the declar- 
ation of the independence of the United States. 
It was in existence therefore for a little less than 
one hundred and fifty years, and its duration was 
nearly coincident with that of the colonial period of 
this commonwealth. 

Our subject leads us first to the career of George 
Calvert, first Baron, the projector, though not the 
founder, of the Maryland Province. 

George Calvert, the first Lord Baltimore, whose 
life will be the subject of our consideration this 
afternoon, was born at or near Kiplin in Yorkshire, 
England, about 1580. The exact date of his birth 
has not been ascertained. His father was Leonard 
Calvert, a country gentleman, who lived in the 
valley of the Swale in Yorkshire, and whose wife, 
the mother of George Calvert, was Alicia Crossland, 
a lady of gentle birth, belonging to a family of the 
same neighborhood. 

The origin of the Calvert family has never been 
successfully traced. There were Calverts in York- 
shire as early as the fourteenth century, and it has 
been generally assumed that the family was of 
Flemish origin. In the exemplification of arms 
issued in 1622 by Kichard St. George, Norroy King 
of Arms, the original of which is now preserved in 
th(e collection of the Maryland Historical Society, 
itf is stated on the authority of Yerstegan, antiquary 



4 THE LORDS BALTIMORE AND 

and philologist^ that " Sir George is descended of a 
noble and ancient family of that surname in the 
earldom of Flanders, where they have lived long in 
great honor." The fact of the Flemish origin is 
probably true, but the date of the migration of 
Calvert's ancestors to England is unknown, and the 
means of tracing the genealogy to the Flemish 
family apparently did not exist ; for instead of con- 
firming to Sir George the coat of arms belonging to 
that family, as would probably have been the case if 
the identity had been satisfactorily established, the 
bearing of another coat, of diiferent device, but 
composed of the same tinctures, was approved, Avith 
the crest pertaining to the Flemish family added.^ 

At the early age of fourteen George Calvert en- 
tered Trinity College, Oxford, where he received his 
bachelor's degree in 1597. 

At the University, Calvert acquired a thorough 
knowledge of the Latin tongue, and it is prob- 
able that there also he obtained a familiarity with 
the French, Italian and Spanish languages, which 
proved especially valuable to him in the political 

^ The coat of arms borne by Sir George Calvert is described 
in the exemplification referred to as ''paley of six pieces or 
and sable, a bend coimterchanged," with this crest: — "the 
upper part of two half lances or, with bandrolls thereto ap- 
pending, the one or, the other sable, standing in a ducal 
crown gules," which is declared to be "the ancient crest 
descended unto him from his ancestors." The arms of the 
Flemish family are described as "or, three martlets sable." 
Md. Hist. Soc, Calvert Papers, No. 1, p. 38. 



THE MARYLAND PALATINATE 5 

and diplomatic offices which he was, in later life, 
called to fill. After his graduation, following 
the fashion which prevailed then, as now, for the 
completion of a well-rounded education, he trav- 
elled upon the continent of Europe, and it is 
likely that he then made the acquaintance of Sir 
Robert Cecil, who had been sent by Queen Eliza- 
beth on a special embassy to the Court of Henry 
IV., and who afterwards became the stanch friend 
of Calvert and the founder of his political fortunes. 

Shortly after the accession of King James, Calvert 
obtained a seat in Parliament as representative of a 
Cornish borough, and not long after he married 
Anne, daughter of John Mynne, a gentleman of 
Hertfordshire. 

In 1605, upon the occasion of the King's visit to 
Oxford, the master's degree was conferred upon 
Calvert, among many distinguished candidates, in- 
cluding the Duke of Lennox, the Earls of Oxford 
and Northumberland, and Sir Robert Cecil. 

About this time Calvert became private secretary 
to Cecil, and was appointed by the King clerk of 
the Crown and Assizes in County Clare, Ireland. 
Thus began his connection with that kingdom, to 
the peerage of which he was afterward to be eleva- 
ted. The death of his powerful friend and patron 
Cecil occurred in 1612, but he had already acquired 
the special confidence and favor of the King and 
his political fortunes continued steadily to advance. 
In 1613 he was appointed clerk to the Privy 



6 THE LORDS BALTIMORE AND 

Council, and also a member of an important com- 
mission sent to Ireland to enquire into the discon- 
tents which had arisen there as a consequence of 
King James's policy in endeavoring to bring tlie 
people into conformity with the religion, and obedi- 
ence to the law, of England. 

Calvert was appointed on two such commissions 
to investigate the affairs of Ireland, and though his 
associates included men much more distinguished 
than himself, it is not improbable that his facile pen, 
— for he held the pen of a ready writer, — was useful 
in preparing their reports. It is evident that at 
this time he was not in sympathy with the Roman 
Catliolic Church, of which in later life he became a 
member ; for tlie reports speak with emphasis of the 
powerful influence of the Jesuits in fomenting the 
existing discontents, and stimulating resistance on 
the part of the Irish. This fact is of interest in 
connection with the antagonisms, which we shall 
hereafter consider, which arose between his son 
Cecilius and the Jesuit missionaries in Maryland. 

In 1610, on the occasion of the accession of 
Louis XIII., Calvert was sent by elames upon a 
special mission to France, and from this time on he 
seems to have enjoyed the distinguished favor of the 
King. He was the King's colaborator in his theo- 
logical dispute with the Dutch Arminian Vorstius, 
— but whether as assisting in the composition of 
the royal theologian's thesis, or merely as translator 
of it into the Latin tongue is uncertain. It is 



THE MARYLAND PALATINATE 7 

more than probable that he was in part, at least, 
author. 

In 1617, upon the occasion of the celebration of 
the marriage of the brother of the Duke of Buck- 
I ingham, the order of knighthood was conferred 
upon Calvert ; and the death of the wise and faith- 
ful counsellor, Cecil, having rendered it necessary to 
the Crown to gain, in his place, the services of a 
minister possessing similar sterling and painstaking 
qualities, Calvert, who had been trained by Cecil, 
was, in 1619, upon the dismissal of Sir Thomas 
Lake upon the charge that State secrets leaked out 
through the loquacity of the latter's wife, advanced 
to the responsible office of principal Secretary of 
State. 

This office, although it made him a member of 
the Privy Council, diifered widely from the modern 
office of Prime Minister, to Avhich it has sometimes 
been supposed to be equivalent. There were at 
that time two principal Secretaries, Calvert's col- 
league being Sir Robert Naunton ; and the office 
had been held by men of great political power and 
influence, including Sir Robert Cecil himself. But 
the functions of the office seem to have been rather 
those of business administrator and recorder than 
of leadership in the proceedings or policy of the 
Council. The influence of the Secretary depended 
more upon his personal qualities than upon his office. 
Sir Robert Naunton, Calvert's associate in office, 
was a studious man of quiet tastes, without political 



8 THE LORDS BALTIMORE AND 

ambition. Calvert was industrious and business- 
like, an accomplished linguist, and possessed great 
familiarity with the domestic and international poli- 
tics of Europe. The value of his services, and 
therefore his influence in the proceedings of the 
Council, were consequently great. 

Buckingham, the King's favorite, had sought the 
office for Carleton, at that time Ambassador to the 
Netherlands, but fliiling to secure it, he made a 
virtue of necessity and himself communicated the 
fact of his appointment to Calvert. The latter 
accepted the office with great reluctance, modestly 
describing himself as unqualified to fill a position 
that had been held by his late distinguished patron, 
Cecil. He no doubt also had a perfectly practical 
perception of the difficulties to be confronted at the 
Court of James I. by every one concerned in affairs 
of State. Calvert had been useful to the King, and 
the latter depended upon him ; but James was fickle 
and capricious, and any tenure of office that de- 
pended upon his favor was precarious. 

The condition of public affairs, too, was anything 
but reassuring. In England there was a constantly 
increasing feeling of unrest, and on the continent 
of Europe there was turmoil and warfare from 
Bohemia to the Rhenish provinces. In fact, it was 
the first year of that prolonged strife, partly dynastic 
and partly religious, that has passed down into his- 
tory with the direfully significant designation of 
'' The Thirty Years War.'' 



THE MARYLAND PALATINATE \) 

Upon the occasion of his appointment, James 
questioned Calvert ch)sely concerning his wife, and 
warned him of the example of his predecessor Lake, 
whose wife and daughter he compared respectively 
to Eve and the serpent. Calvert bore aifectionate 
testimony to the distinguished virtues of Lady 
Calvert, and relieved the King's mind of anxiety as 
to any mischief arising through indiscretion in speech 
on her part. 

At this time Spain and France were rivals for 
the friendship of England ; and those in England 
who favored alliance with the former, strongly advo- 
cated, as a means of closely uniting the interests of 
the two countries, the marriage of the Prince 
Charles to the Infanta Maria. This match was 
favored by the King, and, though the proposal was 
not approved by the majority in Parliament, it was 
strongly advocated by Calvert, who, while his utter- 
ances in Parliament were listened to with respect on 
account of the recognized sincerity of his personal 
character, suffered from being the representative and 
mouth-piece of the King, to whose policy the popu- 
lar judgment was opposed. 

Mercenary or venal motives have been attributed 
to Calvert on account of his advocacy of the Spanish 
match, and he has even been accused of having been 
influenced by Gondomar, the Spanish Ambassador, 
by pecuniary considerations. It is sufficient to say 
that such charges were not seriously entertained 
against him during his lifetime. The accusation 



10 THE LORDS BALTIMORE AND 

was given currency by a note of Tindal, an editor 
of Rapin's History. It is not due to the historian 
himself^ On the other hand, there is such contem- 
porary testimony as that of Tillieres, the French 
Ambassador at tlie English Court, who, though the 
representative of the power that was the chief polit- 
ical rival of Spain, described Calvert as " an honor- 
able, sensible, well-minded man, courteous towards 
strangers, full of respect towards ambassadors, zeal- 
ously intent upon the welfare of England ; but by 
reason of all these good qualities, entirely without 
consideration or importance." If by this he meant 
the consideration and importance which at a notor- 
iously corrupt and profligate court could only be 
obtained by corruption and time-serving, he was 
right. But all contemporary testimony goes to 
show that the real opinion entertained of Calvert's 
sincerity of character was in accordance with that 
expressed by the French Ambassador. 

Notwithstanding the widening breach between 

' History of England, by M. Rapin de Tlioyras : 3d edition, 
translated by Kevd. N. Tindal, 1743 ; vol. ii, p. 200. M. Kapin 
(16G1-1725) was a French Huguenot who rendered military 
service under William of Orange. {Nouvelle Biographie Gene- 
rale. ) He wrote in sweeping terms that ' ' Count Gondemar 
had bribed with presents and pensions all those who had the 
King's ear, and who took care to cherish him in this vain 
project." Tindal adds in a foot-note the names of a number 
of persons supposed to have been bribed, and among them is 
included that of Sir George Calvert ; but Tindal wrote more 
than a century after the event. 



THE MARYLAND PALATINATE 11 

King and Parliament, the gross scandals attached 
to the Court, and the prevailing corruption and 
favoritism, Calvert, both as a member of Parliament 
and a minister of the Crown, remained a loyal sup- 
porter of the royal authority. But is it necessary to 
impute to him, therefore, unworthy motives? A 
struggle between royal prerogative and parliament- 
ary government was inevitable. The immediate 
results of that struggle, the strife and bloodshed 
that must ensue, could be foreseen, even without 
forecasting that the triumph of the parliamentary 
party would cost James's son and successor both his 
crown and his head. But Calvert knew of the 
violence and license practised under the name of 
liberty by the Anabaptists and others on the conti- 
nent of Europe. Is it wonderful that a man of 
conservative temperament, trained in t]ie political 
school of tlie Tudors, recognizing the dangers of an 
immediate triumph of the popular will, but unable 
to look a century ahead and perceive the ultimate 
result in a monarchy limited by constitutional 
restraints, and a government controlled by a legisla- 
tive body truly representative of the will of the 
nation, should shrink from the prospect of an as- 
sault upon the royal power? To such a man the 
possibility of an orderly popular government must 
have seemed remote, and the resistance of Parliament 
must have been viewed by him much like the begin- 
ning of anarchy, or of horrors such as were actually 
witnessed a century and a half later in France. It 



12 THE LORDS BALTIMORE AND 

is not surprising that such a man should think it 
better for the common weal that the people should 
be governed by a King, though luiworthy, than that 
the King should be governed by a turbulent people. 
And in respect to the Spanish marriage, of which, 
though distasteful to the majority of the people Cal- 
vert was an advocate, it was a subject upon which 
men and statesmen might reasonably differ. With 
all Germany involved in war, England was in need 
of a powerful ally, and Spain was to all outward 
appearance the most powerful, as well as the richest, 
nation in the world. That the seeds of decay had 
already taken root was not apparent. The glories 
and the triumphs of the reign of Charles V. were 
not so remote but that their memory lingered. And 
the conquests of Cortes and Pizarro in the new^ 
world had apparently opened to Spain inexhaustible 
sources of wealth. Witli England's treasury empty, 
the prospect of the rich dowry which the Spanish 
Princess was to bring, was no small consideration in 
the eyes of the spendthrift James. Gondomar, the 
Spanish Ambassador to England, was an accom- 
plished diplomat, and no doubt did acquire a consid- 
erable influence with Calvert and other advisers of 
the King. Negotiations were kept pending, but 
the conclusion of a treaty was skilfully postponed. 
Meanwhile, contrary to the inclination of the people, 
James was kept from interfering on behalf of the 
Protestant Princes in Germany, or on behalf of his 
son-in-law, Frederick the Elector Palatine, who, in 



THE MARYLAND PALATINATE 13 

accepting the crown of Bohemia, had not only failed 
to secure that kingdom, but had imperilled his claim 
to his hereditary principality as Avell. At last came 
the visit of Prince Charles and Buckingham to 
Madrid with a view of conducting negotiations in 
person, an expedition which resulted in the disclosure 
of Spain's insincerity in the negotiations, and their 
final rupture. 

In the Parliament of 1624 Calvert, having lost 
the seat which he had held for Yorkshire, was 
returned as one of the members for the University 
of Oxford. But, disheartened by the failure of the 
Spanish alliance, in the success of which he had been 
deeply interested, recognizing the increasing difficul- 
ties which beset the throne, dominated by the influ- 
ence of favorites, opposed in policy by the Commons, 
and regarded with hostility on account of abuse of 
the royal prerogative and the multiplication of impo- 
sitions, Calvert became anxious to retire from official 
position. He had moreover become a convert to 
the Roman Catholic Church, and his action in 
resigning may have been precipitated by his appoint- 
ment, in January, 1625, upon a new commission to 
try recusants. At all events, in the following 
month, he resigned his Secretaryship and openly 
avowed his adherence to the Church of Rome. 
According to the fashion of the times his successor. 
Sir Albert Morton, paid Calvert £6000 for the suc- 
cession to the office, or about the equivalent of its 
emoluments for three years. The King accepted 



14 THE LORDS BALTIMORE AND 

his resignation with regret, and as a mark of his 
special favor retained him as a member of the Privy 
Council, and created him Baron of Baltimore, in 
the Kingdom of Ireland. Calvert had previously 
received other marks of the royal favor. In 1621 
the King granted him a manor of 2300 acres in 
County Longford in Ireland, and in 1623 a charter 
for what was erected into the Province of Avalon in 
Newfoundland in the })arts of America. 

Calvert had for some time been deeply interested 
in the ventures for colonizing the new world, and as 
early as 1609, had been a member of the Virginia 
Company. He was subsequently a member of the 
provisional council for the management of the Vir- 
ginia colony, and in 1622 was one of the eighteen 
councillors of the New England Company. In 1620^ 
before the grant of his charter, he had purchased a 
plantation called Avalon upon the island of New:- 
foundland. 

His release from the cares of official position gave 
Calvert the opportunity to devote his attention to 
his schemes for colonization. The charter of Avalon 
was exceedingly liberal in its terms and in the powers 
conferred upon the proprietary. The province Avas 
erected into a county palatine, held of the Crown by 
strictly feudal tenure in capite by knight's service. 

But the affairs of the Avalon colony did not 
prosper, and Calvert determined upon visiting it in 
person, to investigate its conditions and retrieve its 
fortunes, if possible. He sailed for Newfoundland 



THE MARYLAND PALATINATE 15 

in the summer of 1627. The settlers then numbered 
about sixty persons, and though the season of the year 
was favorable, Calvert Avas evidently disappointed 
both in the character and condition of his colony. 
He found an inhospitable climate, land little sus- 
ceptible of cultivation, with fisheries the most valu- 
able industry. Returning, after a brief sojourn, to 
England for the winter, Calvert again set sail for 
Avalon in the summer of 1628, taking with him 
Lady Baltimore, his second wife ' (his first wife hav- 
ing died in 1622) and all of his family, — except his 
eldest son Cecilius, who remained to look after the 
estates in Ireland, — together with about forty colo- 
nists. 

The results of this second voyage were such as to 
lead Calvert to determine upon abandoning the 
Avalon colony as hopeless. He went upon an 
errand of peace, but war between England and 
France having been precijDitated by Buckingham's 
policy, certain French ships, cruising in the North 
Atlantic, attacked the Newfoundland settlements and 
captured two English vessels. Calvert promptly 
sent two vessels, manned and armed as fully as 
practicable, to the rescue, and succeeded in driving 
off the invaders and recovering their captures. 
Sixty-seven prisoners were also taken, which to a 
colony which apparently did not number much more 
than one hundred persons must have rendered the 

' Her given name, as mentioned in legal papers, was Joan ; 
her family name the writer has not ascertained. 



16 THE LORDS BALTIMORE AND 

victory both expensive and inconvenient. It is wor- 
thy of note that the vessels which were engaged 
upon this expedition were the Ark and the Dove, 
the former described as of three hundred and sixty- 
two tons burthen, and the latter a pinnace of sixty 
tons, vessels which were destined a few years late/r 
to have their names inscribed forever on the pages 
of Maryland's history, for in them were conveyed 
the first colonists of the Province of Maryland. 
Shortly after, an English man-of-war, the Unicorn, 
appeared, and in company with Calvert's ships a 
search was made for the Frenchmen in the different 
harbors of the Island. This cruise resulted in the 
capture of six French ships. These were sent as 
prizes to England. 

Calvert appears to have felt some concern as to 
his own part in this warfare, lest he should be held 
accountable for violation of the laws of war in 
engaging in a naval battle without being licensed by 
letters of marque ; for in writing to Buckingham, 
giving an account of these occurrences, he expressed 
the hope that he Would ^^ pardon all errors of for- 
mality in the proceedings." The death of Buck- 
ingham had occurred two days before this letter 
was written. 

Lord Baltimore's son, Leonard, who returned to 
England with the prizes, petitioned the King, 
Charles, for letters of marque to be issued to his 
father, antedated, so that he should be legally en- 
titled to a share in the prize money ; and a petition 



THE MARYLAND PALATINATE 17 

was also addressed to the Admiralty by AVilliam 
Peasely, Baltimore's son-in-law, asking that one of 
the captured ships might be lent for the defence of 
the colony at Newfoundland. The ship Saint 
Claude was thereupon loaned to Baltimore for a 
year and taken back to the colony by Leonard 
Calvert. 

The rigors of the climate had convinced Lord 
Baltimore that for a successful colonization a more 
southern location must be sought. Lady Baltimore 
sailed for Virginia before the close of the year, and 
remained some time at Jamestown. Lord Baltimore 
himself remained during the winter at Avalon, and 
in a letter to the King, written in August, 1629, 
stated that he had learned by dear-bought experience 
facts which had hitherto been concealed from him, 
among others that " from the midst of October to 
the midst of May there is a sad face of winter upon 
all this land ; both sea and land so frozen for the 
greatest part of the time, as they are not penetrable ; 
no plant or vegetable thmg appearing out of the 
earth until it be about the beginning of May, nor 
fish in the sea ; besides the air so intolerable cold as 
it is hardly to be endured. By means whereof, and 
of much salt water, [meat ?] my house hath been an 
hospital all this winter ; of a hundred persons, fifty 
sick at a time, myself being one; and nine or ten 
of them died.''^ He therefore asked the King to 

1 Md. Archives. Proc. of Council 1636-1667, p. 16. 

2 



18 THE LORDS BALTIMORE AND 

grant him some precinct of land in the dominion 
of Virginia, with such privileges as the King, his 
father, had been j)leased to grant to him at Avalon. 

Charles replied to this letter discouraging Lord 
Baltimore from further attempts at colonization. 
After expressing appreciation of his efforts in that 
direction, he said : " Seeing that your plantation in 
Newfoundland (as we understand by your letter) 
hath not answered your expectation, which Ave are 
informed you take so much to heart (having therein 
spent a great part of your means) as that you are 
now in pursuit of new countries, we out of our 
princely care of you, well weighing that men of 
your condition and breeding are fitted for other 
employments than the framing of new plantations, 
which commonly have rugged and laborious begin- 
nings, and require much greater means in managing 
them than usually the power of one private subject 
can reach unto, have thought fit hereby to advise 
you to desist from further prosecuting your designs 
that way, and w^ith your first conveniency to return 
back to your native country, where you shall be 
sure to enjoy the liberty of a subject and such 
respect from us as your former services and late 
endeavors do so justly deserve.'' 

This letter of advice, coming from the King, 
would no doubt have been regarded by Lord Balti- 
more as tantamount to a command for his prompt 
return to England ; but before its receipt he had 
sailed for Virginia, where he arrived in October, 



THE MARYLAND PALATINATE 19 

1629. There he was but coldly received. The 
charter of the Virginia Company had been annulled, 
and the Governor and Council of Virginia, knowing 
or suspecting Lord Baltimore's designs to establish a 
southern colony, recognized that it was within the 
bounds of possibility for the King to grant him a new 
charter for the whole dominion of Virginia, excepting 
only such portions as had become private property. 
They determined therefore to be rid of him. A 
means was easily found. Notwithstanding the fact 
that he had lately been a member of the Privy 
Council, and also of the provisional council for the 
government of the Virginia colony, they demanded 
of him not only the oath of allegiance, but the oath 
of supremacy as well, which they knew he could not 
conscientiously take. In doing so they apparently 
exceeded their authority, though Lord Baltimore 
offered to take the oath in a modified form. This 
they refused to accept, and declared that the matter 
would have to be referred to England. The ques- 
tion does not appear to have been further pressed, 
but the departure of Lord Baltimore was hastened. 
That his presence at Jamestown was resented by 
some of the populace is shown by a record that one 
Thomas Tindall was pilloried '^ for giving my Lord 
Baltimore the lie and threatening to knock him 
down.'' But the action of this ruffian, in offering 
personal violence, did not indicate the general dispo- 
sition, or at least that of the ruling class ; for Lord 
Baltimore was content to leave his wife and family 



20 THE LORDS BALTIMORE AND 

at Jamestown under the protection of the govern- 
ment there, while he returned to England to seek a 
grant or charter for a new colony in southerly 
latitudes. 

Being detained in England on this business much 
longer than he had anticipated, he procured a letter 
from the Lords of the Council to the Governor of 
Virginia, instructing the latter to afford to Lady 
Baltimore and her family his best assistance for her 
return to England. The Saint Claude was again 
loaned to Lord Baltimore by the government, this 
time for the conveyance of his family home. The 
vessel had a prosperous voyage to America, but upon 
its return was wrecked upon the coast of England, 
and though the lives of the passengers were saved, 
all the valuable property and personal effects with 
which the vessel was freighted were lost. 

Baltimore, notwithstanding the dissuasion of the 
King and his implied promise to recompense him 
for his losses by an increase of royal favor, steadily 
adhered to his cherished plan of establishing a col- 
ony in the new world. At length the King yielded 
and gave him a grant of territory extending from 
the James River, southward to the Chowan, and 
westward to the mountains. This grant was bit- 
terly opposed by members of the dissolved Virginia 
Company, who still sought and hoped for a revi- 
val of the charter of that company. Not wishing 
to embark upon his enterprise with the powerful 
hostility of those interested in the Virginia Company 



THE MARYLAND PALATINATE 21 

confronting him, Lord Baltimore asked the King to 
reconsider this grant. This was accordingly done, 
and the grant of Carolana, as the territory just 
described was called, was surrendered, and in lieu 
thereof a grant was promised of territory lying 
immediately to the noi-th of Virginia, and on both 
sides of the Chesapeake Bay, including the whole 
of the peninsula on the eastern shore, and extending 
on the western shore, from the 40th degree of north 
latitude, (which was the southern boundary of New 
England) down to the mouth of the Potomac River, 
and taking for the southern boundary the south 
bank of that river, westwardly to the longitude of 
its first source. This territory, though within the 
limits of the original grant to the Virginia Company, 
lay between the New England and Virginia colonies, 
without infringing upon either, and it was believed 
that no settlement had been made by Englishmen 
within its limits. It was subsequently ascertained 
that settlements had been made by Virginia colonists 
upon the lower portion of the eastern shore penin- 
sula, and that portion was consequently excluded 
from the grant. 

The charter for this new colony, to be established 
under the name of Maryland, did not pass the seal 
until after the death of George, the first Lord Bal- 
timore, to whom it had been promised, and was 
therefore issued to his son and heir, Cecilius, second 
Lord Baltimore, who thus became the first Proprie- 
tary of Maryland. 



22 THE LORDS BALTIMORE AND 

George, Lord Baltimore, had for some time been 
in declining health, and on the 15th day of April, 
1632, Avith the members of his family about him, he 
passed away. He was but fifty-two years old at the 
time of his death. His life, though comparatively 
brief, had been singularly eventful. Sprung from 
a family previously unknown, his ability was early 
recognized and his political preferment was rapid. 
He became, successively, member of Parliament, 
clerk to the Privy Council, one of the principal 
Secretaries of State, and member of the Council. 
He was entrusted with missions abroad, and with 
the most important negotiations with foreign powers. 
He enjoyed the confidence of the King, and as a 
member of Parliament was entrusted with the diffi- 
cult task of defending, against a powerful and 
hostile majority, the King's unpopular policy and 
measures. Meanwhile, he was actively interested in 
plans of colonization in the new world ; and when at 
last, — wearied with the strife of political life, and 
finding himself unable, from changed religious con- 
victions, conscientiously to discharge duties that were 
required of him, — he resigned his office and its 
emoluments, it was only to devote himself with vigor 
to founding a new province in the wilderness. For 
this purpose he made two voyages to America, and 
though he did not live to see the fruition of his 
labors, he visited and saw for himself the region which 
was secured by grant to his son. So much for the ex- 
ternal events of the life of the first Lord Baltimore. 



THE MARYLAND PALATINATE 23 

It is fitting to add a word as to the man. He 
did not perhaps possess the qualities that constitute 
greatness, but he did possess in the highest degree 
those that constitute usefulness and true worth. 
He was judicious, prudent, tactful, possessed of the 
most untiring industry, and above all, living in the 
midst of a most scandalously corrupt court, and at 
a time when a newly forming public opinion was 
beginning to demand a higher standard of public 
morals, even though the downfall of a Lord Chan- 
cellor were the result, his integrity was never ques- 
tioned during his lifetime. It was not until after his 
death that any one ventured to attribute his advocacy 
of the Spanisli match to the influence of Spanish gold, 
while in Goodman's History of the Court of King 
James it is ascribed to religious zeal. It does not 
appear that either of these theories is sustained by 
evidence. Lord Baltimore's whole course in this 
matter was that of a man following the lead of his 
convictions. His course was uniformly consistent. 
He believed that the alliance with Spain was for the 
best interests of England, and whether his judgment 
was right or wrong, he steadfastly acted in accord- 
ance with its dictates. 

In respect to his change of faith, this also was 
attributed by some to the influence of Gondomar, 
the Spanish Ambassador, and Baltimore was accused 
of concealing for motives of policy his conversion 
to the faith of the Church of Rome. There appears 
to be no ground for either assertion. After Gondo- 



24 THE LORDS BALTIMORE AND 

mar's departure from England, Baltimore was still 
serving on commissions against the seminary and 
recusant clergy, and urging the King to extend aid 
to the Protestants in Germany. There is no appar- 
ent reason to doubt that his previous attachment to 
the Church of England, in which he had been reared, 
was as sincere as his subsequent conversion to the 
Church of Rome. When, after his change of faith, 
already weary of political life, he was appointed 
upon a new commission against Papists, he seized 
the opportunity to announce his inability to serve, and 
resigned his office. Shortly after, lie left London for 
the home of his childhood in Yorkshire, in company 
with an old schoolmate. Sir Toby Mathews, who, 
though a son of the Protestant Bishop of Durham, 
had become a Jesuit. It is perhaps more reason- 
able to ascribe Lord Baltimore's change of faith 
to the influence of Sir Toby than to proselyting 
zeal on the part of Gondomar. The carelessness 
with which assertions are sometimes made and 
inferences drawn without warrant of facts, even 
by persons who write in the character of histo- 
rian, is shown by the statement of Bishop Goodman, 
who wrote that one ^^ who was thought to gain by 
the Spanish match was Secretary Calvert, and as he 
was the only Secretary employed in the Spanish 
match, so undoubtedly he did what good offices he 
could therein for religion's sake, being infinitely 
addicted to the Roman Catholic faith, having been 
converted thereunto by Count Gondomar and Count 



THE MARYLAND PALATINATE 25 

Arundel, whose daughter Secretary Calvert's son 
had married." ' Had married, the historian says. 
The negotiations concerning the Spanish match were 
terminated in 1623; Lord Baltimore announced his 
conversion to the Roman Catholic faith and resigned 
office in 1625 ; but the marriage of his son Cecilius 
to the daughter of Lord Arundel, — who Avas not 
the Count or Earl of Arundel, whose family 
name was Howard, but Lord Arundel of Wardour, 
whose rank was that of Baron, — did not take place 
until 1629. In 1623 Cecilius was but seventeen 
years of age. So it is found sometimes in histories 
to which the reader should feel justified in turning 
for facts, that there is confusion of dates, the sub- 
stitution of inference for evidence, and a consequent 
confusion of cause and effect. 

As an illustration of the inner spirit of the man, 
a letter written by Lord Baltimore to Lord Went- 
worth, his old colleague as member of Parliament 
for Yorkshire, upon the occasion of the death of the 
latter's wife, is of special interest. He wrote : — 

" Were not my occasions such as necessarily keep 

^ Court of King James the First : London, 1839, by Dr. God- 
frey Goodman, Bishop of Gloucester (1583-1655), Vol. r, 
p. 376. This writer was appointed Bishop of Gloucester in 
1625 : suspected of Popish sentiments and imprisoned in the 
Gate House in 1640 upon refusing to subscribe to the canons 
and regulations prescribed by Archbishop Laud. Subse- 
quently he gave his allegiance to the Church of Rome. 
{Nouvelle Biographie Generate ; Fuller's Church History, B. iii, 
p. 408.) 



26 THE LORDS BALTIMORE AND 

me here at the time, I would not send letters, but 
fly to you myself with all the speed I could to express 
my own grief, and to take part of yours, which I 
know is exceeding great, for the loss of so noble a 
lady, so virtuous and so loving a wife. There are 
few, perhaps, can judge of it better than I, who 
have been a long time myself a man of sorrows. 
But all things, my lord, in this world, pass away : 
statidum est; wife, children, honour, wealth, friends, 
and what else is dear to flesh and blood. They are 
but lent us till God please to call for them back 
again, that we may not esteem anything our own, 
or set our hearts upon anything but Him alone, who 
only remains forever. I beseech His almighty good- 
ness to grant that your Lordship may, for His sake, 
bear this great cross with meekness and patience, 
whose only Son, our dear Lord and Saviour, bore a 
greater for you ; and to consider that these humilia- 
tions, though they be very bitter, yet are they sover- 
eign medicines ministered unto us by our heavenly 
Physician, to cure the sickness of our souls.'' 

This letter was written from London and dated 
October 11, 1631, at a time when Baltimore himself 
had much cause for depression. His venture in 
Newfoundland had recently proved a foilure, he had 
been practically expelled from Virginia, and more 
recently the shij) conveying his Avife thence had been 
wrecked and much of his property lost. Himself 
" not ignorant of evil, he had learned to comfort the 
distressed." This letter was addressed to Went- 



THE MARYLAND PALATINATE 27 

worth, afterwards to become the ambitious, the im- 
perious, the relentless Earl of Strafford. Written 
by one who had long been his friend, it throws a 
softer and gentler light than the page of history is 
wont to shed, upon both the sender and him to 
whom it was sent. 

In Mr. Wilhelm's monograph, entitled Sir George 
Calvert, Lord Baltimore, published by the Mary- 
land Historical Society, and also in Dr. Browne's 
George and Cecilius Calvert, Barons of Baltimore, 
in the " Makers of America '' series, both of which 
publications have been freely consulted in the prep- 
aration of this sketch, it is stated that since the 
church, St. Dunstan's, Fleet Street, in which the 
first Lord Baltimore was buried, was destroyed 
during the great fire of London, no statue, bust or 
monument, on either side of the Atlantic, perpet- 
uates his memory. To this statement one exception 
must now^ be made. At the corner of Cathedral 
and Mulberry streets, in this city, there is a school 
conducted by the Christian Brothers in a building 
known as Calvert Hall. Upon the northeast angle of 
that building, and facing toward the Roman Catholic 
Cathedral, there has been erected, beneath a stone 
canopy, a statue. It is the statue of George Calvert, 
the first Lord Baltimore. 



^ 



LECTURE II. 

Cecilius, Second Lord Baltimore. 

OF the early life of Cecilius, the second Lord 
Baltimore, but little is known, beyond the 
facts that he was baptized and confirmed in the 
Church of England. His father Avas conspicuous 
in the public and political life of England, and 
hence some of the principal events of his life can be 
gathered from the histories of his times. Cecilius 
on the contrary never held any public office, and 
appears to have avoided rather than sought notoriety. 
His energies during many years were directed chiefly 
to the affairs, — often troubled affairs, — of his Prov- 
ince in the new world, and in his acts and correspon- 
dence in relation to them, are to be found the chief 
indications of the life and character of the man. 

Cecilius was born in 1606, and named after Sir 
Robert Cecil, the warm friend of his father, to whom 
the latter owed his introduction to, and advance- 
ment in, public life. In 1621, at the age of fifteen, 
he entered Trinity College, Oxford, but no record of 
his graduation has been found. He married Lady 
Anne Arundel, daughter of Lord Arundel of War- 
dour, a lady who appears, from a portrait of her now 
in existence, to have been possessed of remarkable 
28 



THE MARYLAND PALATINATE 29 

beauty. According to Bishop Goodman, who found 
in this marriage one of the causes for his father's 
conversion to the Church of Rome, avowed in 1625, 
Cecilius could have been but eighteen years of age 
at the date thus ascribed for his marriage. As a 
matter of fact, it is plain from MS. evidence, now 
in the possession of the Maryland Historical So- 
ciety,' that this marriage did not take place until 
1629, when Cecilius was twenty-three years of age ; 
but Bishop Goodman's careless inaccuracy has led 
to the assertion by nearly every one who has written 
upon this subject that he was married at the age 
of eighteen. JlL 

In June, 1632, the charter for the Province of 
Maryland, which had been promised to his father, 
but whose death occurred in April of that year, was 
issued to the son, who thus at the age of twenty-six, 
became the first Lord Proprietary of Maryland. 

The charter of Maryland was modelled after 
that of Avalon and was probably framed by the 
first Lord Baltimore. It has been pronounced by 
McMahon to be more ample in its terms than any 
similar charter ever granted by an English Kmg ; ^ 
and in fact the constitution of the Province of 

1 On March 20, 1628/9, Sir George Calvert, Lord Baltimore, 
conveyed certain land in trust for the benefit of Cecilius upon 
his marriage, the conveyance to be void if he should not marry 
within a year from that date. Maryland Hist. Soc, Coll. Cal- 
vert 3fSS., Doc. 39. See reference to Goodman's History on 
page 25, Lecture I. 

^ Historical View of the Govt, of Md. Vol. I., p. 155. 



30 THE LORDS BALTIMORE AND 

Maryland differed materially from those of the 
English colonies previously established upon the 
American continent, the one in Virginia, and the 
other in New England. 

By the terms of the letters patent granted to Lord 
Baltimore, it was declared that Maryland, in order 
that it might be eminently distinguished above all 
other regions in that territory and decorated with 
more ample titles, was erected into a Province; and 
of this Province the Baron of Baltimore and his 
heirs were constituted the true and absolute Lords 
and Proprietaries, with all the powers, prerogatives, 
immunities and royal rights which any Bishop of 
Durham, in the bishopric or county palatine of 
Durham ever had used or enjoyed or of right could 
have held and enjoyed. 

The proprietaries were given the patronage and 
advowsons of churches with authority to have them 
consecrated according to the ecclesiastical laws of 
England. They were given power to enact laws 
with the advice and assent of the freemen or their 
representatives, and to enforce the same through 
courts of their own creation ; to punish violations 
of law, whether committed in the Province or on 
the high seas, even to the taking of life or limb, 
and when the freemen could not conveniently be 
convened, to make ordinances which should have 
the force of law, except that under such ordinances 
no one could be deprived of life, limb or property. 
They were given authority to confer dignities and 



THE MARYLAND PALATINATE 31 

titles, to raise and maintain a military force, to 
wage war, to pursue enemies beyond the borders of 
the Province, and in the event of sedition or rebel- 
lion to proclaim martial law ; to establish ports of 
entry, and upon occasion, to impose taxes and sub- 
sidies upon merchandise ; to alienate land in fee, 
fee-tail, or upon lease ; to constitute manors and 
establish courts-baron. It was in the charter pro- 
vided that all subjects of the Crown going to Mary- 
land, and their descendants born there, should be 
esteemed to be natives of England, have all the 
rights and liberties of Englishmen, with power to 
own land and other estates of inheritance in Eng- 
land. They were given authority to trade not 
only with the mother country, but also with foreign 
nations, with which England was at peace. The 
power of the Crown to impose any customs, taxa- 
tions or contributions within the Province was dis- 
tinctly renounced (though the payment of the cus- 
tomary duties on wares and merchandise brought 
into England or exported therefrom was reserved) ; 
and it was finally declared that the territory des- 
cribed should not thereafter be considered a part of 
Virginia, and that in case of doubt as to the mean- 
ing of any word, clause or sentence in the charter 
it should always be interpreted in the manner most 
beneficial, profitable and favorable to Lord Balti- 
more, his heirs and assigns. There was reserved to 
the Crown, and to all the King's subjects of Eng- 
land and Ireland the liberty of fishing for sea fish in 



32 THE LORDS BALTIMORE AND 

the waters of the Province, with the privilege of 
landing for salting and drying the same, and for 
that purpose to cut hedge-wood and twigs for build- 
ing huts, so that the same were done without notable 
injury to the Proprietary or the residents. 

This province was granted to Lord Baltimore and 
his heirs to be held by feudal tenure in free and 
common socage only, the tribute reserved being two 
Indian arrows to be delivered yearly in Easter 
week at Windsor Castle, and the fifth part of the 
gold and silver ore to be found within the Province.^ 
As no precious metals were discovered, this last was 
a barren provision. Numbers of receipts for the 
Indian arrows delivered from year to year at AVind- 
sor are among the Calvert papers in the possession 
of the Maryland Historical Society. 

From this brief review it will be seen that the 
Lords Baltimore were endowed by the terms of the 
charter with an hereditary sovereignty over their 
province, which differed only from independent rule 
in that the inhabitants were reckoned subjects of the 
Crown as well as of the Proprietary, and the over- 
lordship of the King, and allegiance to him, were 
acknowledged by the yearly tribute of Indian ar- 
rows. The rank of the province was that of a 

^ Tenure in free and common socage differs from that in capite 
by knight's service, in that the uncertain military service re- 
quired by the latter is commuted for a fixed tribute, which in 
the case of the Maryland Province consisted merely of the res- 
ervations mentioned in the text. 



THE MARYLAND PALATINATE 33 

county palatine. There were several instances on 
the continent of Europe of feudal lords holding 
the rank of count palatine. It was conferred upon 
those holding border positions, who were clothed 
with special powers, in order that as wardens of 
the frontier, — lords of the marches, — they might 
the more readily and efficiently act for defence 
in case of sudden invasion. Following this ex- 
ample, William the Conqueror, while seeking to 
provide against the acquisition of too great power 
by the peers of the realm in England, which 
might become a menace to the Crown, recognized 
the importance of granting exceptional authority 
to the lords of the marches or border counties. 
Hence the earldom of Chester on the borders 
of Wales,^ and the bishopric of Durham to the 
north, to which was united the earldom of North- 
umberland, were made counties palatine. The earl- 
dom of Chester was united to the Crown by Henry 
III., and the duchy of Lancaster, which had been 
made a palatinate by Edward III., attached to the 
Crown upon the Duke of Lancaster's accession to 
the throne as Henry IV. At the date of the Mary- 
land charter Durham alone remained of the ancient 
palatinates, and therefore served as the model and 

^ The earldom was united to the bishopric of Chester, so 
that, as in the case of Durham, the palatinate authority was 
bestowed upon an ecclesiastic. Thus William of Normandy 
shrewdly avoided the possibility of the extraordinary powers 
conferred becoming hereditary in any one family. 

3 



34 THE LORDS BALTIMORE AND 

standard of reference in the definition of the palati- 
nate jurisdiction of the Lords Proprietary of Mary- 
land. The authority of a count palatine was little 
short of royal. On account of the military necessi- 
ties of his frontier position, he had authority to 
summon his feudal forces to resist invasion without 
waiting to communicate with the king. In this 
manner the Bishops of Durham exercised authority 
from their ancient and beautiful seat and strong- 
hold near the Scottish border, a site well chosen 
on account of its capability for defence by the 
monks of Lindisforne, when about the close of 
the tenth century they carried thither the remains 
of St. Cuthbert. 

The authority of the Bishops of Durham extended 
not only to military matters ; it included civil juris- 
diction as well. Judges were appointed by them, 
and justice was administered and crmies punished, 
not in the name of the Crown, but of the Bishop. 
These extraordinary privileges, anomalous as they 
may now seem, were retained by the Bishops of 
Durham until the nineteenth century, and were not 
finally abolished until 1836, one year before the 
accession of Queen Victoria. 

All the conditions which originally led to the 
creation of counties palatine applied to colonies 
planted in the new world. They were essentially 
frontier settlements, removed from the seat of 
government by a much greater distance than any 
border county of the kingdom, with much greater 



THE MARYLAND PALATINATE 35 

difficulties of communication. They were near to 
the colonies of France in Canada and Louisiana, 
and to those of Spain in Florida, — countries between 
which and England a state of war might, and did 
from time to time, exist ; and they were surrounded 
by Indian tribes with which hostilities might at 
any time arise. The orderly government of the 
colony required the establishment of courts by which 
the laws could be enforced and wrongs redressed. 
Ample authority for the exercise of all the powers of 
government within the Province of Maryland, inde- 
pendent of any interference or control on the part 
of the Crown, was conferred upon Lord Baltimore 
by the terms of his charter. 

Cecilius promptly set about to fit out an expedi- 
tion for the settlement of the colony, and he as 
promptly met with the most persistent hostility and 
antagonism. Not only were the members of the 
old Virginia Company, who were seeking to have 
its charter revived, with the original boundaries 
intact, hostile to the new colony, but William 
Claiborne, one of their number, was especially 
bitter. Claiborne had established a trading post 
on Kent Island in the Chesapeake Bay, and he 
resented the grant of proprietary rights to Lord 
Baltimore, with authority to regulate trade in a 
region where he proposed to secure the entire 
benefits to himself. The enmity of Claiborne to 
Lord Baltimore's enterprise continued unabated 
during a long life, and he found many opj)ortu- 



36 THE LORDS BALTIMORE AND 

nities of maiiifestiiig it. The actual settlers in 
Virginia did not favor the restoration of the old 
Company, and from them Lord Baltimore had 
nothing to apprehend. But his enemies were active 
in London. There was no charge or complaint 
too frivolous to be urged so it would serve to 
impede his plans. His charter was objected to on 
the ground that the ample powers bestowed upon 
the Proprietary would be subversive of the liberties 
of the people; and at the same time, almost in 
the same breath, that the liberties secured to the 
Maryland colonists were so great that they would 
make the settlers in Virginia discontented.^ The 
expedition being fitted out by Lord Baltimore was 
said to be for the purpose of conveying nuns to Spain, 
and also for carrying troops for that country. With 
these and other contradictory tales, the departure of 
the Maryland pioneers was greatly delayed, and it was 
not until November, 1633, that they finally set sail 
from the Isle of Wight for the capes of the Chesa- 
peake. The vessels were the Ark, of about three 
hundred tons, and the Dove, a pinnace of about fifty 
tons, both of which had belonged to Baltimore's 
fatlier. The former sailed from Gravesend on 
October 18th, but had no sooner departed, than 
information was laid before the Star Chamber that 
the oath of allegiance had not been administered 
to the crew, and that the vessel " was without a 

^ Md. Archives. Proceedings of Council, 1636-1667, pp. 18, 19. 



THE MARYLAND PALATINATE 37 

clearance from the custom-house. Orders were 
accordingly sent post-haste to the admiral com- 
manding at the Straits to intercept the ships and 
send them back.^ Lord Baltimore, in a letter to 
Earl Straiford, denounced these charges as "most 
notoriously and maliciously false.'' At all events 
the ships proceeded on their way after the oath 
had been admmistered to one hundred and twenty- 
eight persons. At the Isle of Wight two Jesuit 
priests were taken on board, and the Company 
which sailed finally numbered over three hundred 
persons. Possibly some others, beside the priests, 
came on board after the visit of the King's 
officers. There were doubtless numbers who 
could not conscientiously take the oath of supre- 
macy ; but what proportion of this first company 
of pilgrims to Maryland Avere of the Roman 
Catholic faith, it is now impossible to determine. 

\ A large proportion of the company was composed 
of men bound to service, and these apparently 
were mostly Protestants. Of the actual settlers, 
men of fortune, who went to take up lands and 
immediately become freemen of the Province, it is 
probable that the majority were Roman Catholics ; 
but it is also likely that they constituted but a 
minority of the entire number of colonists. 

yQ Lord Baltimore fully intended to accompany this 
expedition in person, but the activity and malignity 

^ Md. Archives. Proceedings of Council, 163G-1667, p. 23. 



38 THE LORDS BALTIMORE AND 

of Claiborne and those associated with him were 
such that he found it necessary to remain in London 
to watch and resist their machinations. The leader- 
ship of the venture was therefore entrusted to his 
brothers, Leonard and George Calvert, of whom the 
former was commissioned Deputy Governor. 

Among the Calvert papers, acquired a few years 
ago by the Maryland Historical Society, is a very 
interesting document, being an autograph letter of 
instructions addressed by Lord Baltimore to his 
brother Leonard, Jerome Hawley and Thomas 
Cornwaleys, whom he had nominated as commis- 
sioners for the government of the Province, touching 
their conduct during the voyage and after their 
arrival in Maryland.^ This letter is particularly 
valuable in revealing the mind and character of 
the second Lord Baltimore, as it is plainly his 
own work even to its manual execution. It is in 
his own handwriting with his own corrections and 
interlineations. 

In the very first paragraph he directed that in order 
to preserve peace and unity among the passengers, 
and to avoid all occasion of scandal or offence, they 
cause all acts of the Roman Catholic religion to be 
performed as privately as possible, and that the 
Roman Catholics be instructed upon all occasions 
of religious discussion to remain silent, and that 
they treat the Protestants Avith as much favor as 

^ Md. Hist. Soc, Calvert Papers, No. 1, p. 131. 



THE MARYLAND PALATINATE 39 

justice would permit. This to be done on land as 
well as at sea. 

The commissioners were also instructed to seek 
tactfully to find out what efforts his enemies had 
made in England to create disaffection among the 
adventurers and to collect evidence upon this point. 
They were to cultivate friendly relations with the 
Virginians, and at the same time, he cautiously 
added, to avoid anchoring under the guns of the 
fort at Point Comfort, but lie over toward the 
eastern shore, about Accomac. A letter from the 
King, and one from his Lordship, to Sir John Harvie, 
the Governor of Virginia, were to be delivered with 
great respect by the hands of a messenger who Avas 
conformable to the Church of England, and along 
with the letters, expressions of friendship and a butt 
of sack, shipped for the purpose, were to be pre- 
sented. Captain Claiborne was to be notified, also 
by a messenger attached to the Church of England, 
of the arrival of the expedition and invited to confer 
about future business arrangements for trading within 
the boundaries of Maryland. 

As soon as landed the people were to be assembled, 
the letters patent publicly read, also his Lordship's 
letter of commission, and then the oath of allegiance 
to the King was to be taken, first by the commis- 
sioners and afterwards by all and every one of them. 
And it was to be distinctly declared that none should 
enjoy the benefit of the Maryland grant but such as 
should give public assurance of their fidelity and 



40 THE LORDS BALTIMORE AND 

allegiance to the King. The commissioners were to 
inform themselves of the condition of the Virginia 
colony, and of the disposition of the leading men 
towards the colony in Maryland ; and, without 
sacrifice of rights, take occasion to oblige any of 
the Council of Virginia. Directions were given as 
to the apportionments of land, the building of a 
fort, and, near by, a house and church for his Lord- 
ship's seat. In laying out a town, the houses were 
to be built in as decent and uniform a manner as 
possible, and adjoining one to the other, and for this 
purpose streets were to be laid out. In apportioning 
land, a tract was to be set out for his Lordship's 
own proper use and inheritance, as in this first 
venture he proposed to place himself along with 
these first settlers, to whom he ^' conceives himself 
more bound in honor." Of all the apportionments 
of land, plats were to be prepared, as also of the 
soundings of the rivers and bays. Instructions 
were to be given for the planting by each one of 
a sufficient quantity of corn ; a military organiza- 
tion was to be effected, and discipline preserved. 
Enquiry was to be made as to the existence of 
material for making salt or saltpetre, and search 
instituted for iron-ore or other minerals. 

Finally, the commissioners were charged that they 
be careful to do justice to every man witliout par- 
tiality, and that they avoid any occasion of diflPerence 
with those of Virginia, but to have as little to do 
with them as they can, — for the first year. 



THE MARYLAND PALATINATE 41 

This letter gives evidence of a wise, just and 
statesmanlike attitude on the part of the first Pro- 
prietary of Maryland, who, a young man, but twenty- 
seven years of age, surrounded and harassed at every 
move by those who sought to place obstacles in 
his way, embarked bravely upon the undertaking 
of founding and organizing a community and a 
government in a far off land which his eyes had 
never beheld, and which they were destined never 
to behold. In his careful instructions as to avoid- 
ing all ground of offence on account of religious 
differences, we can recognize the liberal spirit which 
was afterwards to lead to the famous Act of Reli- 
gious Toleration in Maryland, enacted at a period 
when most men held that to assent to a difference 
in religious opinion, or to permit one who differed 
to go unpunished, was to be accessory to a crime, 
while those in authority acted upon that theory. 

Lord Baltimore's administration of his Province 
was beset with difficulties from the beginning. 

With the neighboring Indian tribes, the relations 
of the Maryland colonists, it is to be noted, were 
uniformly friendly. The country was occupied 
by the Pascataways, a peaceable people, who had 
evidently made some strides in civilization, for 
they had not only erected villages, but had also 
made progress in agriculture, and therefore were not 
wholly dependent, like the more warlike and nomadic 
tribes to the northward, upon the chase. These 
Indians gave friendly reception to the Maryland 



42 TIIE LORDS BALTIMORE AND 

colonists upon their arrival in the Potomac River, 
in March, 1634, and readily ceded to them, in 
exchange for iron tools and pieces of cloth, not only 
ground for a settlement, yielding for their occu- 
pancy some of their own houses — one of which was 
converted into a chapel by the Jesuit Fathers — but 
also lands for planting, reserving only the right to 
gather the crops which they had themselves already 
planted. Their action was uniformly generous, in 
bringing and giving to the newcomers the results 
of the chase, and assisting them in hunting and 
fishing. Important articles of diet among them were 
dishes which they called " pone ^' and '' hominy,^^ 
names which have in this State become familiar in 
household economy.^ The local Indian tribes were 
all the more ready to enter into friendly relations 
with the colonists for the reason that they recog- 
nized in them powerful allies against the more 
warlike tribes to the north, the Susquehannoughs 
and the Iroquois, from whom they suffered frequent 
inroads. It is a pleasant fact to note that through- 
out the colonial history of Maryland the friendly 
relations with these Pascataway Indians were never 
interrupted. The settlers and the Indians were 
alike loyal to each other. 

But disturbances enough came from other quarters. 
The hostility of Claiborne, who claimed a settlement 

^ Voyage to Maryland. Md. Hist Soc. , Calvert Papers, No. 3, 
pp. 41, 43. 



THE MAUYLAND PALATINATE 43 

on Kent Island, was unabated. He refused to render 
allegiance to Lord Baltimore, or to accept title to 
land from him. His claim to priority of title to 
Kent Island had been disallowed in England by 
the Lords Commissioners of Plantations, but, not- 
withstanding, he continued to disregard the authority 
of Lord Baltimore, either as proprietor of the soil, 
or as entitled to regulate trade. Early in 1635, 
Governor Calvert having waited a full year in 
accordance with his brother's instructions, for com- 
pliance on Claiborne's part, caused a pumace sail- 
ing under Claiborne's orders to be seized in the 
Patuxent River for trading in Maryland without a 
license from the Lord Proprietary ; and the master, 
Thomas Smith, was arrested. He was released, but 
the vessel was detained. Reprisals quickly followed. 
Claiborne fitted out an armed sloop with instruc- 
tions to its commander to attack any Maryland 
vessels. Governor Calvert sent two pinnaces, under 
command of Thomas Cornwaleys, in pursuit of this 
invader. The vessels met at the mouth of the 
Pocomoke, and Claiborne's vessel was captured after 
its captain and two of the crew had been killed. 
A few days later there was another skirmish ; this 
time with a vessel commanded by the same Thomas 
Smith who had been captured shortly before. The 
intercepting and capture of Claiborne's vessels 
reduced the settlers at Kent Island to sore straits 
for food, a fact which in itself suggests that this 
settlement was not, as Claiborne pretended, an 



44 THE LORDS BALTIMORE AND 

established plantation^ but rather a trading post, 
dependent for supplies from without. 

Claiborne's principals in England, Messrs. Clo- 
berry & Company, merchants of London, utterly 
disapproved of his attitude towards Lord Baltimore, 
and applied to the latter for a grant of the land 
at Kent Island, to which they did not pretend to 
have title ; and upon hearing of the turn matters 
had taken, they sent out George Evelyn as their 
representative and attorney with authority to super- 
sede Claiborne. To him Claiborne was obliged to 
yield, and shortly after returned to England where 
he became involved in litigation with Cloberry & 
Company. 

After examining the terms of Lord Baltimore's 
charter, Evelyn promptly recognized that the Kent 
Island station could not be maintained without 
liis authority and permission. He therefore offered 
his submission to Governor Calvert and obtained 
from him an appointment as Commander of Kent 
Island. He endeavored to induce the settlers to 
recognize the Proprietary's authority and apply to 
him for grants of the land which they occupied. This 
they refused to do, being instigated to resistance 
by representatives of Claiborne, who remained in 
the island ; whereupon Evelyn invited Governor 
Calvert to undertake the forcible reduction of the 
settlement. This was not finally accomplished until 
two armed expeditions had been sent for the pur- 
pose. The second, in February, 1637/8, was under 



THE MARYLAND PALATINATE 45 

the personal command of Governor Calvert, who 
returned bringing with him as prisoner that Thomas 
Smith, who had taken part in the naval encounters 
two years before, and who had begun to fortify 
Palmer's Island near the head of the Chesapeake. 
Smith was tried by the Assembly and condemned 
to death for piracy. A bill of attainder was brought 
against Claiborne and all his possessions within the 
Province declared forfeited. The people of Kent 
Island now cheerfully acquiesced in the new order, 
accepted deeds for their lands, and selected a dele- 
gate to represent them in the Assembly.^ 

Lord Baltimore's next difficulty came from an 
unexpected quarter. At the time of the planting of 
the colony it had been arranged that the sj^iritual 
oversight of the settlers, as well as the conversion of 
the savages to the Christian faith, should be confided 
to members of the Society of Jesus. Accordingly 
three Jesuits, Fathers Andrew White and John 
Altham, and Thomas Copley, accompanied the first 
voyagers. Whether the last named was at that 
time in Holy Orders, or a lay member of tlie 
Society, is not now perfectly clear. These mission- 
aries addressed themselves with heroic zeal to the 
work before them, the cure of souls and the con- 
version of the heathen ; but they did not stop there. 

^ Governor Calvert estimated the number of men on the island 
capable of bearing arms at the time of his expedition at one 
hmidred and twenty, besides some women and children. — Md. 
Hist. Soc.y Calvert Papers, No. 1, p. 186. 



46 THE LORDS BALTIMORE AND 

Notwithstanding the fact that Lord Baltimore claimed 
title to all the land in Maryland by virtue of his 
grant from the King of England, these ecclesiastics 
proceeded to obtain cessions of large tracts from 
the Indians among whom their ministrations were 
conducted, which lands they proposed to hold 
independent of the Proprietary ; and they further 
claimed that the canon law had full force in this 
newly planted colony, and that under the provisions 
of the Papal Bull In Coena Domini, ecclesiastics, 
and ecclesiastical property were exempt from tlie 
jurisdiction of the civil authority. Lord Baltimore, 
though himself sincerely attached to the Poman 
Catholic Church, was prompt to resent these pre- 
tensions, and to take alarm at the prospect of the 
acquisition of large tracts of land by ecclesiastical 
bodies. He went so far as to apply to the Propaganda 
at Pome for the recall of the Jesuit missionaries, 
and the sending in their stead of secular priests. 

The dispute lasted several years. In a letter 
dated in April, 1638, from Father Copley to Lord 
Baltimore the demands of the clergy are set forth. 
Among other things it was asked that the church 
and the priests' houses should be sanctuary ; that 
they themselves, their domestic servants and half 
the planting servants be free from public taxes ; 
and that the rest of their servants and their tenants 
have exemption by private understanding ; that 
they and their attendants should go freely among 
the Indians and trade with them without requiring 



THE MARYLAND PALATINATE 47 

license from the government ; and that the relin- 
qnishment of any ecclesiastical privilege should be 
voluntary on their part, they to be the judges of 
the occasion/ 

In November, 1642, Lord Baltimore wrote with 
great emphasis to his brother, Governor Leonard 
Calvert, upon the subject of the position assumed 
by the clergy. He mentioned that another member 
of those of the lull (by which term the Jesuits 
were designated) had by slight gone on board a 
shiji about to depart for Maryland, which action 
he, for divers reasons, resented as a high aifront 
to himself; and directed that this priest, if he 
were to be found m the Province, should be 
apprehended and sent back. He went on to 
express his firm conviction that they plotted his 
destruction, and declared that " if the greatest 
saint upon earth should intrude himself into my 
house against my will and in despite of me, with 
intention to save the souls of all my family, but 
withal give me just cause to suspect that he like- 
wise designs my temporal destruction, or that 
beiug already in my house doth actually practise it, 
although withal he do perhaps many spiritual goods, 
yet certainly I may and ought to preserve myself 
by the expulsion of such an enemy, and by providing 
others to perform the spiritual good he did, who shall 
not have any intention of mischief towards me.^^ ^ 

^Md. Hist. Soc, Calvert Papers, No. 1, p. 166. 
^Ibicl, pp. 216, 217. 



48 THE LORDS BALTIMORE AND 

The matters m dispute were fortunately referred 
to a man of great wisdom and discretion, Rev. 
Father Henry More, Provincial of the Jesuit Society 
in England. He decided against the claims of his 
subordinates, upheld the title of Lord Baltimore to 
the land, and directed that all grants to the Church 
or for church uses must be obtained from the Pro- 
prietary, and that those claimed from the Indians 
sliould be surrendered. He further renounced all 
claim to immunity from the operation of the laws 
of tlie land, and agreed that no priest should be 
sent to Maryland without the consent and approval 
of Lord Baltimore. The priests Avho had proved 
troublesome were recalled and others sent in their 
places. This difficulty was thus amicably ended, 
and the missions in Maryland continued to be served 
by the Jesuits. 

But Lord Baltimore was careful to guard against 
the recurrence of similar difficulties in the future, by 
withdrawing from his Deputy Governor in Maryland 
the power to grant any land whatever to ecclesias- 
tical bodies. That power he concluded to reserve 
to himself He shortly thereafter prepared new 
conditions of plantation. By these conditions the 
provisions of the English statutes of mortmain were 
practically extended to Maryland, and the taking 
up of land by any society or corporation, temporal 
or spiritual, was prohibited. It is interesting to 
note the permanent influence of this conflict between 
Lord Baltimore and the Jesuits upon legislation in 



THE MARYLAND PALATINATE 49 

Maryland. In this State alone no religious body 
can acquire land by purchase, gift or devise, except 
a small tract for a church building, without the 
sanction of the Legislature, no bequest or devise 
to a minister of religion as such is valid without 
similar sanction, and no minister of religion is 
permitted to be a member of the Legislature. 

At a session of the Assembly begun in January, 
1638, the first of which any record exists, a body 
of laws transmitted by the Lord Proprietary to be 
adopted by the Assembly for the government of the 
Province was presented, and rejected by that body, 
the only votes in their favor being cast by the 
Governor and Secretary with their proxies. The 
Assembly then proceeded to adopt laws of their 
own framing, which were sent to the Proprietary 
for his approval, and in turn, rejected by him. 
Here was a struggle immediately precipitated as 
to the right to initiate legislation. By the terms of 
the charter of Maryland, laws for the government 
of the Province were to be enacted by the Lord 
Proprietary, with the assent of the freemen of the 
province or a majority of them or their delegates. 
The enacting power was not with the legislative 
body, but with the Proprietary. But the former 
promptly claimed the right to propose or originate 
legislation. This claim Lord Baltimore at first 
resisted, resting upon the express terms of his 
charter ; but perceiving that the prolongation of a 
dispute upon this subject would leave the Province 
4 



50 THE LORDS BALTIMORE AND 

without any laws at all during its continuance, he, 
with that singular good judgment which he mani- 
fested on other occasions as well as this, and which 
enabled him, firm and resolute as he was in asserting 
and defending his rights, to recognize the occasions 
when a reasonable concession could be wisely made, 
yielded the point, and in the following August 
commissioned the Governor, his brother, Leonard 
Calvert, to give assent in his name to such laws 
as he should think fit, which should be consented 
to and approved by the freemen of the province, or 
their deputies in Assembly. Such laws, so approved, 
should continue in force in the Province until they 
should subsequently be finally disapproved by the 
Lord Proprietary by an instrument under his hand 
and the great seal of the Province ; but if confirmed 
by the Proprietary, they should thereafter be irrevo- 
cable by him. 

At this session of the Assembly the three Jesuit 
priests, being freemen of the province, were sum- 
moned as members. On the first day Mr. Robert 
Gierke, of St. Mary's, answered for them and asked 
that they be excused by reason of sickness. At roll 
call on the second day he asked that they be excused 
altogether from attendance, which was allowed. That 
the sickness referred to would more properly be 
described as an indisjyositioii, is apparent from the 
letter of Father Copley to Lord Baltimore in relation 
to this session and its proceedings in which he says : 
" It was not fit we should be there in person, and 



THE MARYLAND PALATINATE 51 

our proxies would not be admitted in that manner as 
we could send them ;^^ and so they were ^^ excluded." 

It was not to be expected that the political strife in 
England, which was soon to result in the temporary 
overthrow of the royal power and the death of 
the King, would be without its echo in Maryland. 
Though far removed from the scene of conflict, there 
were partisans here both of King and Parliament. 
Early in the year 1644, Governor Calvert having 
gone to England to confer with his brother about 
the affairs of the Province, there came to St. Mary^s 
a sea captain named Richard Ingle, commanding 
a vessel called the Reformation. He was arrested 
by the authorities on the charge of using violent 
and treasonable language concerning the King, and 
committed to the custody of the sheriff, but Captain 
Cornwaleys and Mr. Neale, two members of the 
Council, restored him to his vessel. He thereupon 
sailed without waiting for the formality of a clear- 
ance, but he soon returned, and after committing a 
number of violences, again departed, this time taking 
with him his friend Cornwaleys as a passenger for 
England. 

Governor Calvert upon his arrival in Septem- 
ber of the same year, found the colony in much 
disquiet. Claiborne, who has been described as the 
arch-enemy of Maryland, had been making secret 
visits to Kent Island seeking to stir up sedition 

^Md. Hist. Soc, Calvert Papers, No. 1, p. 158 (already 
referred to on p. 47). 



52 THE LORDS BALTIMORE AND 

among the settlers at that place. Ingle meanwhile 
returned, this time Avith an armed vessel and some 
sort of a commission from Parliament ; — letters of 
marque, he claimed. He seized possession of St. 
Mary's, the seat of government of the Province, 
and for about two years kept up a state of anarchy. 
He appears to have been little else than a pirate 
and marauder, — equipped with sufficient force to 
overthrow the existing government, but without 
either ability or disposition to establish another in 
its place. He pillaged plantations, despoiled dwell- 
ings of everything valuable, even to the locks and 
hinges on the doors, stole the great seal of the 
Province, — it being made of silver, — and wrought 
havoc generally. No records were kept of proceed- 
ings during his sway, and many of the records of 
earlier date were lost or destroyed. 

Ingle's depredations appear to have been entirely 
impartial, for he did not spare even the plantation 
of Cornwaleys, to whose intervention he owed his 
own escape from justice the year before, and from 
whom he appears besides to have embezzled mer- 
chandise to the value of about £200, entrusted to 
him for sale. But then Cornwaleys was a Roman 
Catholic ; and when he sought redress at law in 
England for the injuries done him. Ingle addressed 
a whining petition to the House of Lords in which 
he declared that he had only taken goods from 
wicked papists and malignants in Maryland, and 
represented that " it would be of a dangerous 



THE MARYLAND PALATINATE 53 

example to permit papists and maliguants to bring 
actions of trespass or otherwise against the well 
affected for fighting and standing for Parliament." ^ 

Leonard Calvert promptly applied to Governor 
Berkely, of Virginia^ for assistance, and with a 
small force composed of recrnits drawn from that 
colony, and of Marylanders who had sought refuge 
there, he recovered possession of St. Mary's and 
restored order to the Province. A general pardon 
was proclaimed to all insurgents who would take 
the oath of fidelity, with the exception of Claiborne, 
Ingle, and one Durford, who was an associate and 
accomplice of Ingle in the insurrection. 

The authority of the Proprietary was thus for 
the time being restored, but Leonard Calvert, the 
Governor, did not live long to enjoy the fruits of 
his efforts, as he died in June, 1 647, having first 
named Thomas Greene, one of the Council, as his 
successor. It was at the ensuing session of the 
Assembly, in January, 1648, that Mistress Margaret 
Brent made her famous demand for a seat in that 
body and a vote both in her own right and as 
attorney for Lord Baltimore.^ 

Meanwhile, events had marched with rapid strides 
in England. The battles of Marston Moor and 
Naseby had been fought, and the King of England 
was a prisoner in the hands of the Parliament. 
Recognizing the necessity under this condition of 

^ Md. Archives. Proceedings of Council^ 1636-1667, p. 166. 
^ Md. Archives. Proceedings of Assembly, 1637/8-1664, p. 215. * 



y 



54 THE LORDS BALTIMORE AND 

affairs, of so ordering the government of the Province, 
if he were to retain possession of it, as to refute 
the charge which his untiring enemies, Ckiiborne 
and his associates, Avere continually bringing, that 
it was a hotbed of popery. Lord Baltimore, in 
1648, appointed William Stone, a Protestant and 
friend of the Parliament, as Governor, in the room 
of Greene, and reorganized the Council so that one- 
half the members were Protestants. In order to 
preserve the principles of religious liberty, which he 
had maintained in the Province from its foundation, 
principles which had been faithfully observed during 
the governorship of his brother. Lord Baltimore 
embodied in the oath of office to be taken by the 
newly appointed Governor and the members of the 
Council a provision that they would molest or 
disturb no inhabitant of the Province on account of 
his religion. And in the following year the famous 
Act concerning religion, generally referred to as the 
Maryland Act of Toleration, was, at the instance of 
Lord Baltimore, adopted by the Assembly. The 
importance of this Act, and the interest which has 
attached to it, make it worthy of a somewhat fuller 
examination than can be undertaken at this hour ; 
its consideration will therefore be deferred until 
another afternoon. 

Virginia was, as to religion, essentially under the 
influence of the Church of England ; but in 1642, the 
number of Puritans in that Colony had become suffi- 
ciently large to lead to the sending thither from New 



THE 3IABYLAND PALATINATE 55 

England of three ministers to take spiritual oversight 
of these settlers. In the following year the Virginia 
Assembly passed an act reqniring all ministers to 
conform to the Church of England, and directing 
the Governor and Council to compel all non-con- 
formistSj upon notice, to leave the Province "with 
all conveniency." ^ Five years later two of the 
Puritan ministers were ordered to go, and they 
sought refuge in Maryland, where liberty of con- 
science was assured. They were cordially received 
by Governor Stone, and soon a large number of 
Puritans from Virginia followed, who established a 
settlement on the banks of the Severn, to which 
they gave the name of Providence. Glad as these 
immigrants were to avail of the freedom which 
Maryland offered, and to accept the established 
conditions of plantation, which were the same as 
those prescribed for all settlers, their restless spirits 
were not long content with such a tranquil condition 
as complete toleration afforded. As the laws did 
not disturb them, there seemed to be no course left 
to them but to disturb the laws. It seemed to them 
a wicked thing that Roman Catholics should enjoy 
the same liberty as was accorded to them, and 
in fact peace and quiet did not agree with them. 
First, they objected to taking the oath of fidelity 
required of all settlers, alleging scruples of con- 
science ; but, as Dr. Browne remarks in his history 

^ Mereness, Maryland as a Proprietary Province, p. 21. 



56 THE LORDS BALTIMORE AND 

of George and Cecilius Calvert, ^Hliat seems an 
overniceness, since no sciniple apparently intervened 
to prevent their breaking it when taken.'' ^ When 
called upon to select their delegates for the Assembly, 
they refused to do so, explaining afterwards that 
they anticipated a speedy overthrow of the Pro- 
prietary's authority. Tlioir anticipations, partly 
through their own co-operation, proved prophetic. 
King Charles I. had expiated his faults and his 
blunders upon the scaifold. Virginia, with enthu- 
siastic loyalty, promptly proclaimed Charles II. 
King, and made it treason to utter anything against 
the House of Stuart, or in favor of a Puritan 
Parliament. Governor Stone having occasion to 
be absent from Maryland temporarily, designated 
as deputy during his absence, his own predecessor, 
Thomas Greene, who seized upon the moment of 
his brief authority to follow the example of Virginia 
and proclaim Charles II. with public rejoicings and 
a general pardon. Stone promptly returned and 
removed Greene from office ; but the mischief had 
been done. Claiborne, the watchful and untiring 
enemy of Lord Baltimore, saw his opportunity. He 
had lately been an ardent royalist and President of 
the Council of Virginia ; but no politician, ancient or 
modern, could change face quicker than he. He 
immediately espoused the side of Parliament, and 
secured the designation of himself as one of the com- 

^ Georye and Cecilius Calvert, Barons of Baltimore, p. 139. 



THE MARYLAND PALATINATE 57 

missioners appointed for the reductiou of Virginia 
to submission. He wished the commission to read 
Virginia and Maryland, but upon Lord Baltimore's 
representation that the proclamation of Charles II. 
was made without either his authority or knowledge, 
it wias agreed that Maryland should be omitted. 
Claiborne then, with characteristic duplicity, had the 
commission framed to apply to all the plantations 
within the bay of Chesapeake, relying successfully 
upon English ignorance of American geography. 
Maryland, therefore, while not mentioned by name, 
was included by geographical description. 

Two of the commissioners appointed were lost 
at sea, so that the office devolved upon the survi- 
vors, Richard Bennett, one of the Puritans who 
had sought and found asylum under the liberal 
laws of Maryland ; Edmund Curtis, who does not 
figure conspicuously in subsequent transactions ; 
and William Claiborne himself, whose covetous 
eye was never removed from Kent Island, the 
possession of which he sought. 

These commissioners, acting under the authority 
vested in them by the English Parliament, proceeded 
to remove the Governor and Council appointed by 
Lord Baltimore, and confided the government to 
a council composed of William Fuller, one of the 
settlers at Providence, and others, to be conducted 
in the name of the Keepers of the Liberty of 
England. Governor Stone and Thomas Hatton, 
the Secretary, were, however, reinstated upon con- 



58 THE LORDS BALTIMORE AND 

seiiting to accept appointments at the hands of 
the commissioners^ though reserving and saving to 
themselves the oath taken to the Lord Proprietary 
until the pleasure of the State of England could 
be known. Writs for elections to a General Assembly 
'vere issued Avith the provision that no Roman 
Catholics should be eligible as delegates or per- 
mitted to vote. A new Act concerning religion 
was passed, expressly excluding from toleration any 
persons adhering to papacy or prelacy. 

Meanwhile, Lord Baltimore was not idle in 
England. After Cromwell had dissolved the Parlia- 
ment and caused himself to be declared Protector, 
the authority claimed by the commissioners expired, 
and Lord Baltimore directed Governor Stone to 
reassert the authority of the Proprietary. Stone 
gathered a force and marched upon Providence. 
Fuller assembled his forces and with the assist- 
ance of two armed merchantmen, then in port, 
defeated the force under command of Governor 
Stone, who surrendered upon promise of quarter. 
In spite of his promise, Fuller, immediately after 
the surrender, proceeded to hold a court-martial, 
and condemned Stone and nine others to death. 
In execution of the sentence four of the pris- 
oners were murdered, and the lives of the 
remainder were saved only by the refusal of 
Fuller's own soldiers to be the instruments of his 
treachery, and by the intercession of some humane 
women. Stone, who was wounded, was cast into 



THE MARYLAND PALATINATE 59 

prison, and the Puritan influence Avas for tlie time 
triumphant. 

The claims of Lord Baltimore for restoration to 
his rights under his charter, were finally recognized 
in Enf^land, and a decision rendered in his favor. 
Meanwhile, Governor Stone being in prison. Lord 
Baltimore commissioned one Josias Fendall as his 
successor ; and upon articles of agreement being 
entered into in England between Lord Baltimore 
and Richard Bennett, one of the commissioners, 
for the restoration of the Province to the Pro- 
prietary, the government was eventually, in 1658, 
surrendered to Fendall as his representative. The 
very same year Fendall proved traitor to his chief, 
and joined with the Assembly in a new effort 
to overthrow the authority of the Proprietary. 
Cromwell, who had finally proved the powerful 
supporter of the validity of Lord Baltimore's 
claims, — in spite of the efforts of the commissioners 
to have Maryland wiped off the face of the map, 
by the restoration of the boundaries of Virginia 
to what they were before the dissolution of the 
A-^irginia Company, — was no longer living. The 
title of Protector had passed to his son ; but the 
power of the office had expired with its creator. 
In Maryland the delegates to the Assembly took 
the initiative in revolt by informing the Gover- 
nor, Fendall, that they, the Assembly, claimed 
to be vested with the supreme authority in the 
Province. The latter responded that it was his 



60 THE LORDS BALTIMORE AND 

belief that the intent of the charter granted by 
Charles I. was to give the freemen full power 
to make laws without the assent of the Pro- 
prietary. How he reached this conclusion^ when 
the charter expressly provided that the Proprie- 
tary should make the laws^ with the assent of the 
freemen, it is difficult to imagine. At all events 
his logic served his own purpose, and he surrendered 
his commission as Goveruor appointed by Lord 
Baltimore, and accepted the same office at the 
hands of the Assembly. This rebellion was of brief 
duration. Charles II. acceded to the throne. Lord 
Baltimore appointed his youngest brother, Philip 
Calvert, Governor in the place of Fendall, and the 
latter's brief sway was terminated. 

For the remaining fifteen years of Cecilius' life- 
time the affairs of the Province were unmarked by 
any special disturbance. In 1661, shortly after the 
events just referred to. Lord Baltimore appointed 
his son and heir, Charles Calvert, Governor, with 
Philip Calvert as Secretary, and once more the 
Proprietary was brought into as close touch with 
the Province as he had been while the governor- 
ship was held by his brother, Leonard, who came 
out with the first settlers. Upon the death of 
Cecilius, Lord Baltimore, in 1675, Charles succeeded 
to his title and estates, and as Lord Proprietary 
continued for some years, with brief interruptions, 
to reside in the Province and exercise the govern- 
ment in person. 



THE MARYLAND PALATINATE 61 

The proprietaryship of Cecilius extended over a 
period of more than forty years. During that time 
he expended large sums of money and impaired his 
private fortune in the development of his American 
Province^ but did not live to reap the reward of 
his labors. From the beginning he was beset with 
difficulties, which continued almost to the end. He 
had to face the active and persistent hostility of 
Claiborne and those of the Virginia Company who 
held with him, and who missed no occasion for 
seeking his overthrow. He early had a conflict 
with the Jesuits, both in respect to land tenures 
and questions of jurisdiction. His authority was 
interrupted by the Ingle rebellion, and temporarily 
overthrown by the commissioners of Parliament 
and the Puritan party. Fendall, his own appointee, 
proved a traitor to his trust. But, throughout, 
Cecilius seems never to have lost courage, and under 
all circumstances he bore himself with wisdom, 
patience, forbearance and tact, and by these quali- 
ties he triumphed in the end. His own interests 
and his own authority he carefully guarded ; but 
at the same time he as carefully sought the welfare 
of the Province and of the people who were in a 
sense his subjects ; and when concessions seemed 
reasonably demanded he knew how and when to 
yield, and so exercised a much less autocratic power 
than was conferred by the terms of the charter 
from which his authority was derived. 

Efforts have sometimes been made to belittle 



62 THE LORDS BALTIMORE AND 

the character of CeciliuS; the first Proprietary of 
Maryland, and to ascribe his acts, even the wisest 
and the most liberal, to a narrow selfishness. 

The assertion has been made that Cecilius lay 
under such suspicion that he was detained in Eng- 
land as a hostage for the good behavior of his 
representatives in America, as well as by the' 
necessity, imposed by the terms of his charter, of 
personally presenting two Indian arrows annually 
at Windsor.' 

As a matter of fact he remained in England 
solely for the purpose of watching and resisting 
the eiforts that were being constantly made by 
interested persons to secure the annulment of his 
charter. He found, with regret, that he could best 
serve the interests of the colonists by remaining 
at home, and therefore sacrificed his inclination to 
take personal part in the planting of the colony. 
On one occasion, during the Commonwealth, Lord 
Baltimore, writing to refute charges of disloyalty 
brought against him by those who coveted the 
Province, and therefore sought to deprive him of 
it, referred to the fact that his estates and residence 
in England were security for him. But the refer- 
ence was clearly to his landed estate, which would 
be subject to confiscation for treason, and not to 
any obligation as to his personal residence in the 

^ Religion under the Barons of Baltimore, by Rev. C. E. 
Smith, D. D., p. 121. 



THE MARYLAND PALATINATE b6 

kingdom.^ And it is true that upon one occasion 
when he was thought to be contemplating a voyage 
to America a writ ne exeat was sued out to prevent 
his leaving the kingdom ; but this grew out of 
private litigation and was absolutely without public 
or political significance. 

The suggestion about the personal delivery of 
the arrows at Windsor is hardly worthy of com- 
ment. The immediate successor of Cecil ius lived 
a number of years in Maryland, and two at least 
of his successors spent a good deal of time on 
the continent of Europe ; but the regular delivery 
of arrows went on. The receipts for these arrows 
preserved among the Calvert papers in the posses- 
sion of the Maryland Historical Society range 
in date from 1633 down to 1765.2 They were 
signed by the Governor or Constable of Windsor 
Castle, or by some official as his representative, and 
generally recite that they were delivered by the 
hands of a servant or messenger. The receipts were 
signed in the name of the King, except that for 
several years, beginning with 1655, they were signed 
on behalf of the Lord Protector, and the one for 
the year 1660, just before the restoration of Charles 
II., in the name of Lord General Munck, (sic) for the 
Commonwealth of England. On one occasion only, 
and that was in 1661, does it appear that Cecilius 



1 Md. Archives. Proceedings of Council, 1636-1667, p. 280. 
''Md. Hist. Soc, Coll. Calvert 3ISS., Docs. 842-879. 



64 THE LORDS BALTIMORE AND 

presented them in person. On April IGtli of that 
year, it appears from the form of receipt that he 
did personally deliver the arrows into the hands 
of the King himself, whose restoration to the throne 
had but recently occurred. 

Historians of the highest rank, who have studied 
the acts and character of Cecilius, have expressed 
their conclusions invariably in terms of praise. 

McMahon wrote: "The character of Cecilius, 
the founder of Maryland, has come down to us, 
identified in his acts, and in the language of his- 
torians, with religious liberty and respect for the 
rights of the people.^' " Never '^ (said Dr. Ramsay) 
"did a people enjoy more happiness than the people 
of Maryland under Cecilius, the father of the 
Province.'^ And on his tombstone (said the care- 
ful annalist Chalmers) ought to be engraven, "That 
while fanaticism deluged the empire, he refused his 
assent to the repeal of a law, which in the true spirit 
of Christianity, gave liberty of conscience to all.^^ ^ 

Fiske's conclusion was that " There is no doubt 
as to the lofty personal qualities of the second Lord 
Baltimore, his courage and sagacity, his disinterested 
public spirit, his devotion to the noble ideal which 
he had inherited.'^ ^ 

Dr. Wm. Hand Browne writes : " Every engine 
had been brought to bear against him : fraud, mis- 



Histoncal View of the Govt, of Mel, p. 221. 
^Old Virginia and her Neighbors, Vol. II, p. 150. 



THE MARYLAND PALATINATE 65 

representation, religious animosities, and force; and 
each for a time had succeeded. He owed his 
triumph to neither violence, fraud nor intrigue, 
but to the justice of his cause, and his wisdom, 
constancy and patience.'^ ^ 

Such testimony, uniformly borne by all who have 
studied the subject impartially and written upon 
it in the judicial spirit of historical investigation, 
may be accepted as conclusive evidence of the high 
character of Cecilius Calvert, second Lord Baltimore 
and first Proprietary of Maryland. 

The subject of religious toleration in Maryland, 
with which his name is closely identified, will be 
considered in the next lecture. 



^ Maryland ; the History of a Palatinate, p. 88. 

5 



LECTURE III. 
Religious Toleration in Maryland. 

THERE is probably no one piece of legislation, 
enacted during the colonial period of this 
country, that has given rise to so much contro- 
versy as to its merits as the Act concerning religion, 
passed by the Assembly of Maryland, on April 21, 
1649. It has' been described by the distinguished 
jurist and historian McMahon, as " one of the 
proudest memorials of our colonial history ; '^ ^ and 
many others have written of it in similar *terms. 
On the other hand there have been those to decry 
it — and a recent writer has gone so far as to denounce 
this same Act as " really a most disgraceful piece 
of intolerance,^' and to impugn the motives of all 
that were concerned in its enactment.^ With views 
so divergent, or rather contradictory, held and 
expressed in relation to this Act, it is worth while 
to consider somewhat carefully its actual provisions 
and the circumstances under which it became a 
law. 

That there should be liberty of conscience and 
freedom in the exercise of religion, had been the 

^Historical View of the Govt, of Md., p. 227. 

^ Smith, Religion under' the Barons of Baltimore, p. 319. 

6Q 



THE MARYLAND PALATINATE 67 

settled policy of Lord Baltimore from the founda- 
tion of the colony. We have seen how, in the 
instructions given to the first colonists upon setting 
sail, it was specially enjoined that the Governor 
and commissioners were to be very careful to pre- 
serve unity and peace amongst all the passengers, 
that no oifence be given to any of the Protestants, 
and that Roman Catholics were to be instructed to 
be silent upon all occasions of discourse concerning 
matters of religion. This rule of conduct was 
strictly observed in the colony before any Act 
concerning religion was passed. DiiHhg the early 
years of the Province, the government, except 
when temporarily overthrown by the rebellion of 
Claiborne and Ingle, was in the control of the 
Proprietary. The lower house of Assembly soon 
became a popular rep-esentative body, and a large 
majority of the freemen were at an early date 
Protestants; but the Governor and Council who 
constituted the upper house were appointees of 
the Proprietary. He sought to select those upon 
whom he could depend to guard his interests and 
carry out his policy, and the first Governor, who was 
the Proprietary's brother, as well as a majority of 
the Council, were Roman Catholics. 

Soon after the founding of the Province a pro- 
clamation was issued prohibiting disputes tending 
to cause factions in religion. No record of this 
proclamation has been discovered, but it is referred 
to and quoted in a case which arose in 1638. 



68 THE LORDS BALTIMORE AND 

It is worthy of note, that the records show but 
two cases of violation of the Proprietary's instruc- 
tions, by which this subject appears to have been 
governed prior to the passage of the law of 1649 ; 
and in both cases the offenders were Roman Catholics 
who were arraigned and promptly punished for 
molesting Protestants upon religious matters. The 
first was the one just referred to, in 1638. One 
William Lewis, a Roman Catholic in the employ- 
ment of Thomas Cornwaleys, came into a room in 
which two servants of his master who were lodged 
with him, wer^eading aloud a book of sermons by a 
Protestant minister. Lewis denounced the author, 
Protestant ministers in general, and forbade the 
men to read such books in his house. For this 
he was tried before the Governor, Secretary Lewger 
and Thomas Cornwaleys, all Roman Catholics, 
condemned, and sentenced to pay a fine of 500 
lbs. of tobacco and required to give security for 
his future good behavior.^ 

The second case arose in 1642, when Thomas 
Gerrard, also a Roman Catholic, carried off some 
books and the key from a chapel at St. Mary's 
under claim of some property rights therein. The 
Protestants, who apparently worshipped in the 
chapel, appealed to the Assembly for redress. That 
body ordered the return of the articles removed, the 
relinquishment by Gerrard of all claim to the 

1 Md. Archives : Provincial Court, 1637-1650, p. 38. 



THE MARYLAND PALATINATE 69 

chapel, and imposed upon him a fine of 500 lbs. 
of tobacco to be applied toward the support of 
the first Protestant minister who should come to 
the Province.^ 

It is clear therefore that the principle of religious 
toleration prescribed by Lord Baltunore was fully 
recognized, and was enforced, before the enactment 
in the Province of any statute upon the subject. 

When, upon the overthrow of the royal power 
in England and the triumph of a Puritan Parlia- 
ment, Lord Baltimore recognized the necessity of 
reorganizing the government of the Province by 
the appointment of a Protestant Governor, he 
required that Governor to see that the same liberty 
of conscience should be secured to the Koman 
Catholics as his predecessors had accorded to the 
Protestants. He therefore introduced into the oath 
of office 2 to be taken by him a special provision 
that he would not himself or by any person, directly 
or indirectly, trouble, molest or discountenance any 
person whatsoever m the Province professmg to 
believe in Jesus Christ, and in particular no Roman 
Catholic, for or in respect of his or her religion, 
nor in his or her free exercise thereof within the 
said Province so as they be not unfaithful to his 
Lordship or molest or conspire agamst the civil 
government established here under hkn ; nor would 
he make any difference of persons in conferring 

^Md. Archives: Proc. of Assembly, 1637/8-1664, p. 119. 
*Md. Archives: Proc. of Council, 1636-1667, p. 210. 



70 THE LORDS BALTIMORE AND 

of offices, rewards or favors in respect of their 
religion, but merely as he should find them faithful 
and well deserving. The Governor was further 
sworn that if any officer or other person should, 
during the time of his being Governor, without his 
consent or privity, molest or disturb any person 
within the Province professing to believe in Jesus 
Christ, merely for or in respect of his or her religion 
or the free exercise thereof he would upon notice 
or complaint use his power and authority to relieve 
and protect any person so molested or troubled so 
that they should have right done them, and to the 
utmost of his power would cause any such disturbers 
to be punished. 

Together with the commission to the new Gover- 
nor and the form of oath prescribed for him. Lord 
Baltimore transmitted to the Governor and Council 
a body of sixteen laws to each of which he affixed 
his hand and seal in advance, with instructions 
that if the whole were assented to by the General 
Assembly without alteration or amendment, they 
should be considered as enacted, and in that event 
all previous laws should be held as repealed, 
excepting any acts of attainder or condemnation 
against Claiborne. 

These sixteen laws were evidently to constitute 
a complete code for the colony. In his commission 
accompanying them. Lord Baltimore stated that 
they " were proposed unto us for the good and quiet 
settlement of our colony and people in our said 



THE MARYLAND PALATINATE 71 

Province, and we finding them very fit to be enacted 
as laws there, do hereby consent " ^ for them to be 
presented to the Assembly. 

When these laws were proposed to the Assembly 
all was not smooth sailing. Instead of assenting 
without alteration or amendment to the sixteen laws 
submitted to them, the Assembly at a session held 
in April 1649 adopted twelve laws and ordinances 
of which a portion only were of the number of 
those proposed by the Proprietary ; and apparently 
these did not escape amendment. Some of the laws 
passed related to hogs, the marking of cattle and 
planting of corn, subjects which though important 
matters of regulation in an agricultural community, 
would hardly have been dealt with in what was 
evidently intended to form a code or fundamental 
body of laws for the government of the Province. 
There is, besides, internal evidence of a difference 
in authorship, as some of the laws passed at this 
session were drawn by much less scholarly hands 
than were engaged in framing those which both 
from substance and form may reasonably be ascribed 
to the number prepared for and sent out by Lord 
Baltimore. 

Of the laws passed by this Assembly, the first 
one was the now famous Act concerning religion.^ 
That this Act was substantially in accord with a law 
proposed by Lord Baltimore is evident ; but the late 

1 Md. Archives : Proc. of Council, 1636-1667, p. 220. 
^3Id. Archives: Proc. of AssetiMy, 1637/8-1664, p. 244. 



72 THE LORDS BALTIMORE AND 

Mr. Fiske was apparently in error when he wrote ^ 
that it "was drawn up by Cecilius himself and 
passed the Assembly exactly as it came from him 
without amendment." That it was prepared by his 
order and his direction is certain ; but the laws 
which he submitted were described as having been 
proposed to, and approved by him. The determina- 
tion of their form had evidently been entrusted to 
some one learned in the law and familiar with legal 
phraseology and forms. 

What debate occurred in the Assembly in relation 
to the draft of laws sent over, we do not know. 
The session lasted from April 2 to April 21, but 
the record of the last day^s proceedings only has 
been preserved. Possibly some of those who took 
part in the discussions had reason to wish that the 
records should not be preserved, and their wishes 
were respected. 

The attitude of the Assembly is however fully 
shown in a letter ^ addressed by that body to Lord 
Baltimore explanatory of their action. It is plain 
that some portions of the laws were regarded with 
suspicion by the delegates. In view of the drift of 
events in England, Lord Baltimore had sought to 
secure from the Assembly a formal recognition and 
acknowledgment of the absolute authority and royal 
rights and prerogatives which had been conferred 
upon him by his charter from the King, who was 

^ Old Virginia and her Neighbors, Vol. I, p. 309. 

^Md. Archives: Proc. of Assembly, 1637/8-1664, p. 238. 



THE MARYLAND PALATINATE 73 

a captive in the hands of his subjects at the time 
these laws were prepared, and had been put to death 
before the action of the Maryland Assembly. In 
fact it is evident from Lord Baltimore's letter of 
August 6, 1650, addressed to the Governor and 
Assembly, tnat the recognition of his title as " Lord 
Proprietary '^ was one of the stumbling blocks, 
some suspecting, or pretending to suspect, that the 
acknowledgment of his rights as ^^Proprietary'' 
might impair the title to lands already granted/ 
The spirit of democracy was already awakened 
and there was no disposition to confirm such ample 
powers as were granted by the royal charter. 

The delegates pleaded their inability from alleged 
illiteracy and slowness of understanding to give 
a mature and wise discussion of such a body 
of laws as was now proposed, and protested that 
though they had with much solicitude and earnest 
endeavor, according to their weak understanding, 
read over, perused and debated upon all the said body 
of laws, in real desire for compliance in receiving 
them as laws, they had found them so long and 
tedious, with so many branches and clauses as to 
require a much more serious and longer discussion 
of them than could then be given. As it was a 
condition imposed that the laws should be enacted 
as a whole without amendment, they had thought 
it "most prudential" not to meddle at all with 

1 Md. Archives : Proc. of Assembly, 1637/ 8-1664, i\ 316. 



74 THE LORDS BALTIMORE AND 

them as a body, but to take action only upon such 
matters as they conceived his Lordship to hold most 
urgent ; the first of which they understood to be that 
the country be preserved with peace, and defended 
and governed with justice. To that end they had 
selected out of all his Lordship's laws such as 
seemed to them most conducing to confirm a long 
desired and settled peace among them, and had 
added such others of their own, as they conceived 
to be most necessary. The delegates clearly wished 
to have a finger in the drafting of laws, and did not 
want any more sent out cut and dried, signed and 
sealed in advance ; for they included in their letter 
a request to his Lordship thereafter to send them no 
more such bodies of laws, which, as they said, " serve 
to little other end than to fill our heads with suspi- 
cions, jealousies and dislikes of that which verily we 
understand not. Rather we shall desire your Lord- 
ship to send some short heads of what is desired 
and then we do assure your Lordship of a most 
forward willingness in us to give your Governor 
all just satisfaction that can be thought reasonable 
by us.'' The charter of Maryland provided that 
laws were to be enacted by the Proprietary with 
the assent of the freemen. The Assembly proposed 
to reverse this order of procedure and finally suc- 
ceeded in doing so. 

In the Act concerning religion, as adopted, it 
was declared in the preamble that in a Christian 
commonwealth matters concerning religion and the 



THE MARYLAND PALATINATE 75 

honor of God ought in the first place to be taken 
into serious consideration and settled. 

The Act then proceeded to provide that whoever 
should blaspheme God, deny that the Savior Jesus 
Christ was the Son of God, or deny the divinity of 
either person of the Holy Trinity, should be pun- 
ished with death and confiscation of lands and 
goods ; that reproachful words concerning the 
Blessed Virgin Mary or any of the Apostles or 
Evangelists, should be punished by fine, and in 
default thereof by whipping and imprisonment, 
with increased punishment for a second offence, 
and banishment and forfeiture for a third; that 
the using of reproachful names towards any per- 
son, whether inhabitants, or persons trading in 
the Province, on account of religion, such as 
calling one a heretic, schismatic, idolator, Puritan, 
Presbyterian, popish priest, Jesuit, papist, Lutheran, 
Calvinist, etc., or any other name or term relating 
to religion in a reproachful manner should be 
punished by fine, and in default thereof by whip- 
ping and imprisonment until the offender should 
ask forgiveness publicly of the person aggrieved ; 
that profaning of the Sabbath or Lord's Day, called 
Sunday, by frequent swearing, drunkenness, or 
uncivil or disorderly recreation, or by labor, except 
in case of necessity, should be punished by fine, 
increasing in amount with repetition of the offence ; 
and in default of fine, by imprisonment for the first 
and second offences, until acknowledgment of the 



76 THE LORDS BALTIMORE AND 

fault before a magistrate, with whipping for each 
subsequent offence. 

The Act then continued with a second preamble, 
and recited that "Whereas the enforcing of the 
conscience in matters of religion hath frequently 
fallen out to be of dangerous consequence in those 
commonwealths in which it hath been practised, 
and for the more quiet and peaceable government 
of this Province, and the better to preserve mutual 
love and amity amongst the inhabitants^ thereof," 
it was further enacted by the Lord Proprietary with 
the advice and consent of the Assembly, that no 
person or persons whatsoever within the Province, 
professing to believe in Jesus Christ, should from 
henceforth be any ways troubled, molested or dis- 
countenanced, for or in respect of his or her religion, 
nor in the free exercise thereof within this Province 
or the Islands thereunto belonging, nor any way 
compelled to the belief or exercise of any other 
religion against his or her consent so as they be 
not unfaithful to the Lord Proprietary, or molest 
or conspire against the civil government. Punish- 
ment was provided for violations of this provision 
by fine, and damages to the person wronged. 

The construction of this Act with its two pre- 
ambles, the second one occurring in the body of 
the law, suggests the possibility that it was framed 
from two proposed Acts. The phraseology in the 
second division, in which the principle of religious 
liberty is clearly enounced, is identical in part with 



THE MARYLAND PALATINATE 77 

the oath prescribed by Lord Baltimore to be taken 
by the newly appointed Governor. 

The earlier portion of the Act in which the 

t punishment of death was provided for any one 

jl^ho should deny the divinity of either person of the 

i Holy Trinity, can hardly be considered an ideal 

establishment of religious liberty as that subject 

is viewed at the present day. But it is in the 

light of the seventeenth century and not that of 

the twentieth that the measure must be judged. 

There is moreover no evidence that there were any 

settlers then in the colony to whom this penalty 

would apply, and it is very certain that this clause 

of the law was never at any time invoked against 

any person. 

The provision prohibiting the use of terms denoting 
religious beliefs or affiliations, as terms of reproach 
and opprobrium, indicated a Avise appreciation of 
the importance of avoiding the most likely causes 
of ill-feeling, which might quickly develop into 
quarrels and strife. 

The form of the provision in respect to the 
profanation of the Sabbath, or Lord's Day, called 
Sunday, suggests that it was the subject of amend- 
ment by the Puritan freemen, if the entire clause 
were not inserted by the Assembly. It is extremely 
unlikely that Lord Baltimore, or his counsellors, 
would have used the word Sabbath as synonymous 
with the Lord's Day or Sunday. The designation 
of Sunday as the Sabbath was adopted by the 



78 THJE LORDS BALTIMORE AND 

Puritans with their fondness for Hebrew names 
and nomenclature, and such use gradually became 
more general. But at the time of this Act the 
word Sabbath was still very generally, and properly, 
applied to the seventh day of the week. Father 
White, in the Latin version of his narrative of the 
Voyage to Maryland, speaks of certain events as 
occurring on the Sabbath (Sabbatum), and refers 
to the next day as the Lord's Day (Dominica)} 
And in the proceedings of the Maryland Assembly 
itself, one year later than the date of this Act, we 
find in one place the journal of the House dated on 
the Sabbath, April 6th, 1650, while the proceedings 
two days later are dated Monday, the 8th, showing 
that the older use of the word Sabbath as a name 
for the last day of the week still remained. 

A comparison of the different features of this Act 
leads almost irresistibly to the conclusion that in its 
form it was the result of a compromise between 
somewhat divergent views upon the subject of tolera- 
tion ; but the last portion, in which freedom of 
religious liberty is broadly proclaimed and secured, 
for the avowed purpose of promoting love and 
amity among the inhabitants, and the dangerous 
consequences to the welfare of commonwealths of 
a contrary practice are clearly recognized, plainly 
appears, from the identity of language with that 
prescribed for the form of oath for the Governor, 

'^ Md. Hist. Soc, Belaiio Itineris in Marylandiam^ pp. 12, 13. 
Cf. Calvert Papers, No. 3, p. 27. 



THE MARYLAND PALATINATE 79 

which accompanied the body of laws sent out by 
the Proprietary, to have been a part at least of 
the draft prescribed by Lord Baltimore. In the 
letter of the Assembly already quoted, it was stated 
that they recognized that one of the first desires 
of the Proprietary was that the country might be 
preserved in peace. This was the first Act passed 
at that session, and its avowed purpose was the 
promotion of love and amity among the inhabitants. 

Although displeased that the body of laws which 
had been prepared with much care did not receive 
the assent of the freemen, Lord Baltimore, with 
that well balanced wisdom which he manifested in 
all the various difficulties which he encountered, 
concluded to accept the Act in the form in which 
it had been passed, and on August 6th, 1650, 
confirmed this Act among others by an instrument 
under his hand and seal. That it was not passed 
in its original form is clearly indicated in Lord 
Baltimore's letter to the Governor and Assembly 
dated August 26th, 1651, in which he refers to 
the fact that he had assented to the laws which 
were passed, with such alterations as they them- 
selves desired.^ 

When we compare the scope and purpose of this 
Act with the contemporary views upon the subject 
of religious differences, not only in England but in 
the American colonies, and the intolerance practised 

^Md. Archives: Proc. of Assembly, 1637/8-1664, pp. 322, 327. 



80 THE LORDS BALTIMORE AND 

in the other colonies^ we can recognize how greatly 
Lord Baltimore, in causing freedom of religious 
belief to be established by law in Maryland, was 
in advance of his age. 

At this period religious affiliation and political 
faction were closely identified, and the animosities 
resulting from religious and political differences 
were consequently greatly intensified. Men were, 
or professed to be, ardent adherents to this or that 
religious faith, however little by their lives and 
conversation they might be such as to adorn or do 
credit to any religion ; and those who differed from 
them upon questions of theology or ecclesiastical 
polity, were regarded as enemies to society. 

In New England men like John Winthrop and 
John Cotton, neither of whom, as Mr. Fiske remarks, 
had the temperament which persecutes, believed in 
the principle of persecution. Cotton admitted that 
it was wicked for falsehood to persecute truth, but 
declared it to be the sacred duty of truth to 
persecute falsehood.^ Such naive expressions from 
one as learned and logical as- Cotton really was, 
call to memory Pilate's cynical query, "What is 
truth?'' 

In Massachusetts worship according to the forms 
and usage of the Church of England was prohibited, 
and later, laws were passed banishing Quakers from 
the colony, with punishments prescribed for return- 

^ Fiske, The Beginnings of N&w England (1889), p. 178. 



THE MARYLAND PALATINATE 81 

ing : for the first offence flogging and imprisonment 
at hard labor ; for the second offence the ears were 
to be cut off; and for a third the tongue was to be 
bored with a hot iron. At length, in 1658, capital 
punishment was decreed, and in October, 1659, 
members of that society were actually hanged on 
Boston Common for persisting in returning to the 
colony. The bodies of the victims were denied 
Christian burial and cast, uncovered, into a pit.^ 
Such was the narrow interpretation placed in the 
seventeenth century upon the glorious words adopted 
as the motto of this University : Veritas vos libera- 
bit — "The truth shall make you free.^' 

In Virginia, on the other hand, where the Church 
of England was dominant, scant hospitality was 
extended to Puritans. In 1643 an Act was passed 
requiring all ministers residhig in that colony to 
be conformed to the orders and constitution of the 
Church of England, and making it the duty of 
the Governor and Council to take care that all 
non-conformists be compelled to depart the colony 
with all convenience. The New England pastors 
of Puritan congregations were banished from the 
colony and their flocks harassed — a policy which 
led large numbers of dissenters to abandon their 
homes in Virginia and seek refuge in Maryland, 
where, under the benign sway of Lord Baltimore, 
it was a punishable offense to "disturb or molest" 

^Fiske, The Beginnings of New England (1889), p. 189. 



82 THE LORDS BALTIMORE AND 

them on account of religious belief, or even to call 
them ^' Calvinists ^^ in a reproachful manner. 

It is with conditions such as these prevailing 
to the north and to the south, that we have to 
compare the religious toleration of Maryland. 

That Lord Baltimore was the inventor of the idea 
of toleration is not claimed. Roger Williams had 
proclaimed it in Rhode Island before the Maryland 
Act of Toleration was passed, but not before its 
policy had been established in this colony. 

On the 27th of October, 1645, an order had been 
passed by the House of Commons, upon petition 
of the inhabitants of the Summer Islands (the 
Bermudas), that the inhabitants of these islands 
and such as should join themselves to them, should, 
without molestation or trouble, have and enjoy 
liberty of conscience in matters of God's worship ; 
but this order does not seem to have gone any 
further, and without adoption by the House of Lords 
it could not have had any binding effect in law.^ 

Mr. Gladstone, in the preface to his book entitled 
"Rome, and the Newest Fashions in Religion," 
wrote that the (Maryland) Colonial Act seems to 
have been an echo of this order of the House 
of Commons in respect to the inhabitants of the 
Summer Islands ; and of a British Ordinance of 1647. 

His conclusion is, that " the picture of Maryland 
legislation is a gratifying one; but the historic 

' Johnson ; The Foundation of Maryland and the Origin of the 
Act concerning Religion. Md. Hist. Sac, 1883, p. 126, note. 



THE MARYLAND PALATINATE 83 

theory which assigns the credit of it to the Roman 
Catholic Church has little foundation in fact." 

It is not necessary to assign the credit of this 
Act to the Roman Catholic Church, or to any other 
religious body, or to the Protestant majority in the 
Maryland Assembly. The simple fact of history 
is that the Act was passed at the instance, or rather 
upon the insistence, of Lord Baltimore himself; and 
he was, at the time of its passage, a Roman Catholic. 
It does not appear to have been passed in the exact 
form which he desired, and fell short of assuring 
the broad liberty upon religious matters which was 
expressed in the language of the oath prescribed 
for the Governor, which we know can be attributed 
to Lord Baltimore, and a part of which was em- 
bodied in the Act. The credit for establishing the 
policy of religious toleration in Maryland, and the 
chief credit for the passage of the Act, are simply 
due to one man, the broad-minded Proprietary, and 
not to any religious body. 

As to Mr. Gladstone's comment, it ha^ already 
been observed, that the order of the House of Com- 
mons, in respect to the Summer Islands, which was 
adopted at the instance of the Rev. Patrick Cop- 
land, a clergyman of the Church of England, 
never passed beyond that body and consequently 
never had the force of law. The ordinance of 
1647 which he referred to, embodied certain condi- 
tions to be offered to Roman Catholics if they 
desired to enjoy general liberty of conscience. Its 



84 THE LORDS BALTIMORE AND 

provisions were to extend only to native subjects, 
and by it Roman Catholics were to be prohibited 
from bearing arms, from holding office or from the 
exercise of their religion otherwise than privately in 
their own houses. It was an overture made by the 
Independents, apparently to secure the co-operation 
of the Roman Catholics in making common cause 
with them against the Presbyterians; but when, 
shortly after, the Independents obtained control of 
Parliament and felt no longer in need of allies, 
the matter was dropped.^ 

Mr. Gladstone described the Maryland Act as " an 
echo" of these two ordinances, neither of which 
ever acquired legal force so far as the records show. 
They were projects, while the Maryland Act was 
a formal fact. It gave no uncertain sound, and was 
not an echo. It was the substance and the others 
were the shadows, even though like those of coming 
events, they were projected before. 

It is well known that the Rev. Father Henry 
More, Provincial of the Society of Jesus in England, 
was the friend and adviser of Lord Baltimore, and 
that in the controversy between the latter and the 
Jesuit missionaries in Maryland, Father More took 
sides Avith Lord Baltimore, and compelled his own 
subordinates to recede from the position which they 
had assumed in relation to the acquisition of lands 
by gift from the Indians, irrespective of the title of 

' Ibid.f p. 108 et seq. 



THE MARYLAND PALATINATE 85 

the Lord Proprietary derived under his charter from 
the King of England^ and in their effort to assert 
the supremacy of the canon law in respect to eccle- 
siastical persons. Father More was not unfamiliar 
with the principles of religious liberty ; and the 
probability that he was the adviser of Lord Balti- 
more in preparing his draft of laws for the Prov- 
ince, has been ably argued by General Bradley 
T. Johnson ii^. " The Foundation of Maryland/' 
published by the Maryland Historical Society in 
1883. His great grandfather, Sir Thomas More, 
Lord High Chancellor of England, who more than 
a century before had paid with his life's blood for 
his unswerving adherence to principle, beheld a 
vision afar off of a place, an island which he 
called " Nowhere," in which absolute freedom of 
religious belief prevailed. 

In this mythical region, of which the very 
name indicated that it was without location, it 
was declared to be ^^one of the ancientest laws 
among them, that no man shall be blamed for 
reasoning in the maintenance of his own religion. 
For King Utopus, even at the first beginning, 
hearing that the inhabitants of the land were before 
his coming thither, at continual dissension and 
strife among themselves for their religions. . . . 
First of all he made a decree that it should be 
lawful for every man to favor and follow what 
religion he would, and that he might do the best 
he could to bring other to his opinion, so that 



86 THB LORDS BALTIMORE AND 

he did it peaceably, gently, quietly and soberly, 
without hasty and contentious rebuking and inveigh- 
ing against other. . . . 

" This law did King Utopus make not only for 
the maintenance of peace which he saw through 
continual contention and mutual hatred utterly ex- 
tinguished ; but also because he thought the decree 
would make for the furtherance of religion." ^ 

In this Utopian dream of perfect religious liberty, 
and the avoidance of religious contention, we seem 
to hear the ring of that statute passed in Maryland 
in which the use of religious designations as terms 
of reproach was forbidden, and in the latter part 
of which, — the part that plainly emanated from 
Lord Baltimore, — the purpose was declared to 
be the promotion of "love and amity among the 
people.'^ 

Sir Thomas More saw the vision of such a blessed 
state of affairs in an island — Nowhere. A century 
later it became an accomplished fact in Maryland, 
and the principles of the decree of King Utopus 
were enacted into law and entered upon the statute 
book of the Province. 

Bancroft, the historian, makes this comment : — 
" Thus did the star of religious freedom harbinger 
the day ; though as it first gleamed above the horizon, 
its light was colored and obscured by the mists and 
exhalations of the morning." ^ And in another 

^ Utopia, Book 2. 

^ History of the United States, Vol. I, p. 68. 



THE MARYLAND PALATINATE 87 

place he says : — " The admiuistration of Maryland 
was marked by conciliation and humanity. To 
foster industry, to promote union, to cherish relig- 
ious peace, — these were the honest purposes of Lord 
Baltimore during his long supremacy/' ^ 

As to the motives which actuated Cecilius, Lord 
Baltimore, in adopting the principle of religious 
liberty in the government of his Province, we 
have an explanation in the answer of his son 
and successor, Charles, to certain enquiries about 
Maryland addressed to him by the Lords of the 
Committee of Trade and Plantations. This answer 
was made in March, 1678 — three years only after 
the death of Cecilius. It was in reply to queries 
as to the number of clergymen of the Church of 
England then in Maryland, and for an account of 
all the Protestant families there, and the feasibility 
of gathering them into congregations, with an 
account of the dissenters from the Church of 
England, and the number of ministers they had ; 
and in general, an account of the number of 
planters in Maryland, of what persuasion they 
were in matters of religion, and the number of 
each persuasion respectively. In fact it was a 
religious census that was asked for. 

To this Charles, Lord Baltimore, replied that the 
making of such^ scrutinies would certainly either 
endanger insurrections or a general dispeopling of 

1 Ibkl., p. 438. 



88 THE LORDS BALTIMORE AND 

the Province, which was at present in great peace 
and quiet, all persons there being secured, to their 
content, for a quiet enjoyment of everything that 
they could reasonably desire. The reason why such 
scrutinies would be thus dangerous he stated as 
follows: ^^At the first planting of this Province 
by my father albeit he had an absolute liberty 
given to him and his heirs to carry thither any 
persons out of any of the dominions that belonged 
to the Crown of England who should be found 
willing to go thither, yet when he came to make 
use of this liberty, he found very few who were 
inclined to go and seat themselves in those parts, 
but such as for some reason or other could not 
live with ease in other places ; and of these a great 
part were such as could not conform in all par- 
ticulars to the several laws of England relating 
to religion. Many there were of this sort of 
people who declared their willingness to go and 
plant themselves in this Province so they might 
have a general toleration settled there by a law 
by which all sorts who professed Christianity in 
general might be at liberty to worship God in 
such manner as was most agreeable with their 
respective judgments and consciences, without being 
subject to any penalties whatsoever for their so 
doing, provided the civil peace were preserved ; and 
that for the securing the civil peace and preventing 
all heats and feuds which were generally observed 
to happen amongst such as differ in opinions, upon 



THE MARYLAND PALATINATE 89 

occasion of reproachful nicknames and reflecting 
upon each others opinions, it might by the same 
law be made penal to give any offence in that 
kind. These were the conditions proposed by such 
as were willing to go and be the first planters of 
this Province, and without complying with these 
conditions in all probability this Province had never 
been planted. To these conditions my father agreed, 
and accordingly soon after the first planting of this 
Province these conditions by the unanimous con- 
sent of all who were concerned were passed into 
a law ; and the inhabitants of this Province have 
found such effects from this law and from the 
strict observance of it, as well in relation to their 
quiet, as in relation to the further peopling of this 
Province, that they look upon it as that whereon 
alone depends the preservation of their peace, their 
properties and their liberties. This being the true 
state of the case of this Province, it is easy to 
judge what consequences might ensue upon any 
scrutinies which should be made in order to the 
satisfying these particular enquiries." ^ 

The writer of this letter, Charles, Lord Baltimore, 
was the son and heir of Cecilius, who had died in 
1675. During the last fourteen years of his father's 
life he had held from him the office of Governor of 
Maryland and resided in the Province. No one knew 
better than he his father's views and aims, or w^as more 
familiar with the conditions existing in Maryland. 

^Md. Archives: Proc. of Council, 1667-1687/8, pp. 267, 268. 



90 THE LORDS BALTIMORE AND 

In this plain statement of the circumstances which 
led to the establishment of religious toleration in 
Maryland we do not find Cecilius represented as 
having been influenced solely by a lofty perception 
of the eternal justice of permitting liberty of con- 
science, and neither do we find him described as a 
religious enthusiast leading a band of his co-relig- 
ionists into the wilderness of the new world for 
conscience sake. But we do find that when he 
offered to those who had been harassed and harried by 
the enforcement of laws which made the observance 
of certain forms of religious worship a punishable 
offence, an opportunity of migration, and they 
demanded assurances that they would not be con- 
fronted in the new world with similar oppressions, 
he recognized, in a spirit of broad liberality, the 
reasonableness of the demand, and perceiving that 
in asking liberty, they must, in obedience to a law 
long before promulgated, but often forgotten, do as 
they would be done by, he adopted the principle, 
already known in theory but not in practice, of 
absolute freedom of conscience for all who professed 
and called themselves Christians. We see in this the 
act, not of an apostle of truth, or of one who stood 
as the exponent of a principle hitherto unthought 
of, but rather that of a man who was governed by 
a broad spirit of fairness and liberality, by a far- 
sighted statesmanship, and who, as the record of 
his life and his dealings with his Province amply 
show, having accepted and adopted a principle far 



THE MARYLAND PALATINATE 91 

in advance of the spirit of his age, adhered to it 
unswervingly, enforced it impartially, and, as his 
son testified, secured thereby to the inhabitants of 
the Province, over the destinies of which he was 
the arbiter, such effects that they regarded its 
preservation, that upon which "their peace, their 
properties and their liberties'' depended. 

It is to be added that the principle of religious 
fiberty adopted by the first Proprietary of Maryland 
was essentially adhered to by his heirs and successors 
in title, even by those of them who in subsequent 
generations lacked both the ability and the virtues 
of their progenitor. In after years we find attempts 
at its infringement more than once resisted by those 
whose dealings with the colony in other respects 
fell far short of the standard set by its founder. 

It is true that at one time there were certain orders 
of Council adopted which bore hardly upon the 
Quakers ; but these had no reference whatever to 
religious questions. The facts were simply these. 
The law required that every settler should take 
an oath of fidelity to the Lord Proprietary and 
of allegiance to the King. It further required, as 
was natural in a frontier settlement, that every 
man capable of bearing arms should be enrolled 
in the militia, and be provided with arms and 
ammunition. The Quakers refused to take the 
oath, or enter into other engagement of fidelity, 
alleging conscientious scruples, and also refused to 
bear arms, — leaving the defence of the colony to 



92 THE LORDS BALTIMORE AND 

others. They were besides accused of trying to 
dissuade others from bearing arms. As allegiance 
to the government^ and preparation for defence 
were deemed essential qualities in good citizens, it 
was not unnatural that the government resented 
the attitude of the Quakers. The objection was not 
to their religious views, but to their demeanor as 
subjects. However orderly the lives and behavior of 
these peaceable people might be, they deliberately 
defied laws the observance of which was deemed 
most important ; and for this reason alone were 
regarded with disfavor. An order was adopted 
requiring that they should either comply with the 
law or depart from the Province. If any one 
having been thus banished should return he was 
to be whipped from constable to constable until he 
was again out of the Province. This order of 
Council was not a statute of the Province, and it was 
continued in force for little more than a year ; — it 
was during FendalPs brief administration. In 
the only case of record in which an attempt was 
made to enforce the prescribed penalty, the accused 
ingeniously and successfully pleaded that as he was 
within the Province when the order was adopted 
and had remained there in spite of it, he should 
not be punished for returning} As a matter of fact 
Quakers settled in the Province in large numbers, 
were unmolested, and prospered. 

' Proceedings of the Coumil, 1636-1667, pp. 362, 364. 



THE MARYLAND PALATINATE 93 

What was the temper of the freemen of the 
Province upon the subject of religious liberty, when 
once the firm hand of the Lord Proprietary was 
removed, is shown by an Act of the Assembly 
adopted in 1654, when the authority of Lord 
Baltimore had been temporarily overthrown, and 
dominion over the Province was exercised by 
William Fuller and others, commissioners under 
•the Commonwealth which had been established in 
England. At this Assembly another Act concern- 
ing religion was passed. Its principal provision 
was ^'that none who profess and exercise the popish 
religion, commonly known by the name of the 
Roman Catholic religion, can be protected in 
this Province by the laws of England formerly 
established and yet unrepealed, nor by the Govern- 
ment of the Commonwealth of England, Scotland 
and Ireland, and the Dominions thereunto belong- 
ing, published by his Highness the Lord Protector, 
but are to be restrained from the exercise therof ; 
therefore all and every person or persons concerned 
in the law aforesaid are required to take notice.^^ 

Then follows this delicious parody upon the law 
providing for religious toleration adopted five years 
before : 

"Such as profess faith in God by Jesus Christ, 
though differing in judgment from the doctrine, 
worship and discipline publicly held forth, shall 
not be restrained from, but shall be protected in 
the profession of the faith and exercise of their 



94 THE LORDS BALTIMORE AND 

religioD, so they abuse not this liberty to the injury 
of others or the disturbance of the public peace 
on their part ; provided that this liberty be not 
extended to popery or prelacy nor to such as under 
the profession of Christ hold forth and practise 
licentiousness." ^ 

This was religious liberty as the Puritans under- 
stood it. There should be abundance of liberty ; 
but K-oman Catholics and Episcopalians should 
have no part in it. By the same Assembly the 
former Act concerning religion was repealed. 

When, in 1658, the government of the Province 
was restored to the Lord Proprietary, the Acts 
which had been passed by the Assembly since the 
overthrow of his authority, and to none of which 
his assent had been given, were treated as nullities ; 
and so the old law of 1649 revived. And eighteen 
years later, at an Assembly held in 1676, the first 
one after the death of Cecilius, in order to clear 
up the records and give certainty as to what laws 
were in force in the Province, an Act was passed 
enumerating all previous laws which had been 
repealed, as well as all laws which remained in 
force. Among the latter is found the Act of 1649 
concerning religion. The Act of 1654 is not 
mentioned in either category. It was recognized 
only during the sway of the commissioners of 
Parliament.^ 

^Md. Archives: Proc. of Assembly, 1637/8-1664, p. 340. 
2 Md. Archives : Proc. of Assembly, 1666-1676, p. 548. 



THE MARYLAND PALATINATE 95 

Although somewhat anticipating the march of 
events, it may not be out of place to note what was 
the course of subsequent legislation in Maryland con- 
cerning religion. When upon the accession of William 
and Mary the authority of the Proprietary was again 
overthrown, and the rule of the Province placed in 
the hands of a Governor appointed by the Crown, 
legislation soon followed, prescribing, for the first 
time in Maryland, an Established Church. In 
1692 an Act for the service of Almighty God and 
the establishment of the Protestant religion was 
passed. It provided for the establishment of the 
Church of England ; for the proper observance 
of the Lord's Day or Sunday (which in this Act 
is not designated as the Sabbath) ; ^ prohibited 
the sale of strong liquors on the Lord's Day, 
and then proceeded to provide for the division of 
counties into parishes, the choice of vestrymen and 
the building of churches or chapels. Last but 
not least a yearly tax of forty pounds of tobacco 
per poll was levied upon all the taxables of the 
parish, and the vestries were especially empowered 
to accept any gifts or bequests whether of money, 
goods, chattels, lands or tenements, whether for 
the use of the minister or of the poor ; any law, 
statute or usage to the contrary notwithstanding.^ 

It seemed to be difficult to get this legislation 

^ As to use of the word Sabbath, see p. 78, supra. 
^Md. Archives: Proc. of Assembly, 1684-1692, p. 425. Cf. 
also conditions of plantation quoted on p. 48, sujyra. 



96 THE LORDS BALTIMOBE AND 

into an acceptable form ; the Act was amended in 
1695, and in 1696 an entirely new Act was passed 
by which the Acts of 1692 and 1695 were repealed, 
but with their principal provisions re-enacted in 
greater detail. The new law which was also 
entitled "An Act for the Service of Almighty God 
and the Establishment of the Protestant Eeligion 
within this Province/^ contained two curious features. 
It provided that the Book of Common Prayer of 
the Church of England should be used in every 
church or other place of public worship within the 
Province; and that his Majesty's subjects of this 
Province should enjoy all their rights and liberties 
according to the laws and statutes of the Kingdom 
of England in all matters and causes where the laws 
of this Province were silent.^ The first of these 
provisions naturally aroused the active opposition 
of the Eoman Catholics, Quakers, and dissenters 
from the Church of England of every name ; and 
the second was in point of law fatal to the Act, 
as it contained matter irrelevant to its purpose as 
set forth in the title. This Act therefore came to 
nought. In 1702, still another Act was passed of 
similar scope, but under the guiding hand of Kev. 
Thomas Bray, who had been appointed Commissary 
of the Bishop of London, most of the blunders of the 
former Acts were avoided. By it toleration was given 
to Quakers and other Protestant dissenters. This law 

^Md. Archives: Proc. of Assembly, 1693-1697, p. 426. 



THE MARYLAND PALATINATE 97 

with the exception of some minor amendments 
remained the law of the Province nntil the Eevo- 
lution.^ Its revenue feature, the tax of forty pounds 
of tobacco per poll upon all taxables for the support 
of a clergyman, and a Church, whether they were 
attached thereto or not, was a constant source of 
irritation and discontent. And the lives of numbers 
of the clergy inducted into livings or benefices in the 
Province were far from being such as to commend 
either them, their office, or their teaching. 

Religious toleration, though not to the mind of 
all the inhabitants, had become so deeply implanted 
in the policy of the Province, that, as a result of 
the wise action of its first Proprietary, and also as 
a result of the more liberal spirit of the eighteenth 
century, as compared with that of the seventeenth, it 
continued to prevail, in the sense at least of absence 
of persecution, though the guaranties of the law of 
1702 in this respect fell far short of those contained 
in the Act of 1649 which it superseded. During 
the sw^ay of the royal governors, the statutes of 
England in restriction of the open exercise of the 
Roman Catholic religion were deemed to be in force 
in Maryland, and certain disabilities were conse- 
quently imposed. Lawyers of that faith were for a 
time prohibited from practising in the courts ; Roman 
Catholics were by an Act of 1704 prohibited from 
instructing the young, and encouragement was given 

^ Mereness, Maryland as a Proprietary Province, p. 439. 

7 



98 THE LORDS BALTIMORE 

for the placing of the children of Roman Catholics 
under Protestant teachers ; certain minor annoyances 
were also occasionally imposed upon persons attached 
to the Roman Catholic faith, and other discrimina- 
tions made against them. 

In 1718, the English statutes ^^ for preventing 
the growth of Popery '^ (11 and 12 Wm. III.) 
were formally adopted by the Assembly as the 
law of the Province. The adoption of these harsh 
measures marked a long fall from the liberal policy 
of toleration established in the earlier days of the 
colony, but the actual practice appears to have 
been far more liberal than the letter of the law ; 
and consequently the restrictive measures were not 
assiduously enforced. Of actual persecution for 
conscience sake there appears to have been none. 

Maryland has the proud record, in contrast with 
that of sister colonies, and with the contemporaneous 
conditions in other lands, that within her borders 
religious liberty was from the foundation of the 
colony established ; and though the lustre of this 
fame was eventually somewhat dimmed by the 
character of subsequent legislation, yet, at no time 
in her history did "the temperament which perse- 
cutes " here find an abiding place ; it does not appear 
that any one was ever excluded from her territory, 
and it is certain that no one was ever put to death 
within her boundaries or under her laws, for or on 
account of religious belief. 



LECTURE ly. 

Chaeles, Third Lord Baltimore. 
The Royal Governors. 

CHARLES, the third Lord Baltimore and 
second Proprietary of Maryland, succeeded 
to the title upon the death of his father, in 
November, 1675. It may be well to note that there V 
were but six Barons of Baltimore. In Burke's 
"Extinct, Dormant and Abeyant Peerages'' there 
is a list of seveuj and to the third the name of John 
is ascribed. That person is altogether mythical ; 
he never existed. Charles was the only son and heir 
of his father, Cecilius ; was repeatedly referred to as 
such in his father's letters ; and for fourteen years 
before succeeding to the title and estates acted 
as Governor, and representative of his father in 
Maryland. It will hence be seen that even gene- 
alogies that are supported by the authority of Burke, 
cannot always be accepted as infallibly true. 

As this curious error in respect to the so-called 
John, third Baron of Baltimore, has been often 
repeated, and has even found its way into the 
National Dictionary of Biography, it may be worth 
while to consider for a moment its probable origin. 

99 
LofC. 



100 THE LORDS BALTIMORE AND 

The late Rev. Dr. John G. Morris, in his paper 
entitled "The Lords Baltimore/^ printed by the 
Maryland Historical Society in 1874, fell into the 
error of believing that there were seven Barons 
of Baltimore, although he refuted his own error 
by stating correctly that Charles, whom he calls 
the fourth Baron, became Governor of Maryland 
in 1661, and that upon the death, in 1675, of his 
father, Cecilius, who was the second Baron, succeeded 
to the title. These dates do not leave room for 
the intervention of a third Baron between the 
second and the one erroneously described as fourth.^ 
It is stated in Lodge's Peerage of Ireland, that 
Johij, Lord Baltimore, was a member of the Irish 
Parliament of the fugitive King, James II., in 
1689. In that same year Charles, the third 
Baron, who had succeeded to the title in 1675, 
was outlawed for high treason in Ireland, upon 
accusation of being in rebellion against the estab- 
lished government. He successfully represented, 
however, to King William, that he never was 
in Ireland in his life, and that at the very time 
when he was accused of being in rebellion in that 
country he was present in England, appearing 
before the King and Council on other business, 
and loyally paid his taxes for carrying on the war 
against James. Whereupon in January, 1693, the 

^ Md. Hist. Soc: The Lords Baltimore, 1874, pp. 36 and note, 
42 and note. 



The MARYLAND PALATINATE lOl 

King issued his warrant for reversing the outlawry. 
But Lord Baltimore never appeared before the 
Court of King's Bench in Ireland to secure its 
reversal, and later in life, declaring himself to be 
then very infirm, and advised by his physicians 
that his health and life would be imperilled by 
a journey to Ireland and back, he petitioned the 
English Parliament to pass a bill reversing the 
outlawry, pointing out the hardship of being out- 
lawed in a country where he had never been/ 

It seems to be a not unnatural conclusion that 
Lord Baltimore, being an Irish Peer and a Roman 
Catholic, was in fact summoned to the Parliament 
of James, and being summoned, it was hastily con- 
cluded, even by the Judges of the King's Bench, 
that he responded to the summons and took his 
seat. But as it was clear that Charles, the successor 
of Cecilius, was neither in that Parliament nor 
in Ireland, an intervening Baron was apparently 
invented by the genealogists, — the one who figures 
in Burke's and Lodge's Peerages as John. The 
name ascribed to him may have resulted from an 
error of a copyist, or, in the summons itself, which 
presumably was intended to be issued for the actual 
Baron of Baltimore. 

But to return to the narrative of events ; Charles, 
upon his accession to the Proprietorship, continued 
to exercise the government in person. In 1676, the 

^Md. Hist. SocColl. Calvert MSS„ Doc. 247. 



102 THE LORDS BALTIMORE ANl) 

year after his accession, he convened the Assembly 
for the purpose of revising the laws of the Province, 
and at this session an Act was passed which was 
practically a codification of the existing laws, as it 
enumerated all previous laws which remained in 
force. The same year Lord Baltimore went to 
England, having appointed his infant son, Cecilius, 
Governor, with Jesse Wharton, Deputy. The latter 
was apparently in ill health at the time of his 
appointment. He died shortly after, having first 
designated Thomas Notley as his successor in accord- 
ance with power and instructions given to him by 
Lord Baltimore before his departure. 

The troubles which the second Proprietary had 
to encounter in the administration of his Province 
were no less than those by which his father had 
been beset. He had scarcely left the Province 
before there arose a rebellion which threatened 
for a while the complete overthrow of his power. 
The year before, in 1675, the Susquehannough 
Indians, whose hunting grounds were to the north 
of Maryland, and who had by treaties been taken to 
a certain extent under the protection of the Prov- 
ince, had become greatly reduced in power, and their 
numbers diminished, by the ravages of smallpox. 
At this time a fierce descent was made upon them 
by their ancient enemies, the warlike Senecas, and 
the Susquehannoughs fled in dismay across Maryland 
to the old camping grounds of the Pascataways, 
by the banks of the Potomac. Shortly after, several 



THE MARYLAND PALATINATE 10^ 

murders were committed by Indians on both sides 
of the Potomac. Of these the Susquehannoughs 
were accused, and a number of them were killed 
in reprisals in Virginia. A force was raised, — of 
Virginians, commanded by Col. John Washington, 
and of Marylanders, commanded by Major Thomas 
Truman, who was a member of the Council. A 
party of Indians was besieged in a blockhouse 
near the Potomac, in which they had taken refuge. 
They insisted that they were innocent of the 
murders, and five of their chiefs came to a parley, 
offering to prove that, though numbers of their 
own people had been killed, the murders of the 
white settlers had been committed not by them 
but by the Senecas. Their protestations failed to 
convince Colonel Washington, and it came about 
that these five men, who, though savages, had 
come as envoys on an errand of peace, were put 
to death with the consent and by the authority 
of Major Truman. For this act of treachery he 
was impeached by the Maryland Assembly, but 
escaped punishment by that body on account of a 
disagreement between the two houses as to the 
character of his crime. The lower house provided 
in the bill of attainder for his punishment upon 
conviction, by a pecuniary fine only, while the 
upper house (of which, as one of the Council, he 
was a member) insisted that that was no adequate 
punishment for so grave an offense ; that for murder, 
and a treacherous and atrocious murder at that, the 



104 THt: LOBBS BALTIMORE AND 

penalty should be death, else the administration 
of justice would be brought into contempt. The 
lower house assigned as a reason for urging a 
light sentence, that there was evidence going to 
show that the killing of the envoys was insisted 
upon by the Virginians, and that it was done to 
prevent a mutiny among the soldiers. The upper 
house did not apparently regard the evidence upon 
these points as conclusive, and argued that even 
if true, they afforded no sufficient excuse for a 
horrible crime against the laws of God and of 
nations. In consequence of this disagreement the 
upper house refused to proceed with the trial upon 
the bill of attainder; but Truman was expelled 
from the Council.^ 

The event proved disastrous enough to Virginia. 
The infuriated Indians started southward, laying 
waste the plantations with fire and murder. Sir 
William Berkeley, the Governor of Virginia, refused 
to raise a force to resist the Indian marauders, 
declaring that the county authorities could deal 
with them in their respective bailiwicks. Mean- 
while the outrages went on unchecked, with daily 
murders of men, women and children. The indigna- 

^Md. Archives: Proc. of Assembly, 1666-1676, p. 500. Lord 
Baltimore appears to have used his prerogative to impose 
a more adequate punishment, in spite of the failure of the 
Assembly to act. See p. 108 infra. It is interesting to note 
that in the seventeenth century the colonists of Maryland 
deemed savages entitled to the protection of the laws of 
nations. 



THE MARYLAND PALATINATE 105 

tion against the Governor was intense, and in view 
of the mutinous spirit of the people he probably 
did not dare to raise a military force, lest, after 
quelling the Indians, it should follow the example 
set in England twenty-five years before and turn 
its attention to the overthrow of the government. 
Affairs were in this condition when the overseer 
on a plantation belonging to Nathaniel Bacon was 
murdered. Bacon was not one to sit idly by. He 
offered to go against the Indians, and demanded a 
commission from the Governor; which being refused, 
he raised a force and proceeded to make war upon 
the Indians upon his own account. He was success- 
ful in defeating the Indians, and was rewarded by 
being proclaimed a rebel by Governor Berkeley. 

This was the beginning of what is known as Bacon's 
rebellion, which filled Virginia with violence for 
several months. The spirit of unrest is contagious, 
and since the intervention of the commissioners of 
Parliament, daring the time of the Commonwealth, 
there had been a plenty of restless spirits in Maryland. 
That there were some grounds of complaint is prob- 
ably true — but they were greatly exaggerated, and 
the embers of discontent were being continually 
fanned by those who were in chronic hostility to 
any authority, unless they could wield it themselves. 

The situation was this. The Assembly then 
consisted of two houses. The upper house was 
composed of the members of the Council, all of 
whom were appointed by the Lord Proprietary, 



106 . THE LORDS BALTIMORE AND 

and its devotion to his interests could be counted 
upon. It did not represent a class or estate, like 
the House of Lords, and therefore was looked upon 
with the greater jealousy. But the lower house, 
representative of the freemen, had finally become 
persuaded that it was a House of Commons, and its 
members knew what a House of Commons had done 
in England. Disagreements between the two houses 
were inevitable. In 1669 they had become so 
violent that, at the next election, Charles Calvert, 
who was then Governor, probably acting by direction 
of his father, Cecilius, exercised the discretion given 
to the Proprietary as to the manner of summoning 
the delegates, by restricting the suffrage, — limiting 
the franchise to freemen owning at least fifty acres 
of land or personal property to the value of £40. 
In this he followed an example that had been set 
by Governor Berkeley in Virginia. A more tractable 
house having thus been secured, it was perpetuated 
for several years, and the risk of another election 
avoided, by successive adjournments from year to 
year. The Proprietary discovered that there could 
be such a thing as a Long Assembly as well as a 
Long Parliament. 

The Protestants now formed a large majority of 
the population. Charles, Lord Baltimore, declared 
that the Roman Catholics and the adherents of 
the Church of England together, formed less than 
a fourth of the whole number, and that the latter 
outnumbered the former. The Council, however, 



THE MARYLAND PALATINATE 107 

and therefore the upper house, was largely com- 
posed of kinsmen of the Lord Proprietary, and of ' 
Roman Catholics, who were thus accorded a weight / 
in the government entirely out of proportion to 
their numbers. But the chief real grievance of \ 
the Protestants appears to have been that the 
appointments to lucrative office did not seem to 
come their way ; and it is true that the lower house 
as then constituted, with a restricted suffrage, had 
ceased to be fully representative of the freemen. 
There were, however, not only certain real grounds 
of discontent ; the imaginary ones were much more 
potent. In England the shameful foreign policy of 
Charles II. kept up a constant suspicion and dread 
of a " Popish Plot,'' and the feelings in the mother 
country found their echo in America. In 1676, there 
appeared a curious document called a "Complaint 
from Heaven with a Hue and Cry, and a petition 
out of Virginia and Maryland.'' It is addressed to 
King Charles II. and his Parliament, but endorsed 
" For the Right Honorable the Lord Mayor and 
Aldermen with the Honorable Citizens and Mer- 
chants in London." A copy of it, preserved among 
the colonial papers in the Public Record Office 
in London, has been reprinted in the Maryland 
Archives.' This document is quite lengthy and is 
couched in language somewhat similar to that in 

^3Id. Archives: Proc. of Council, 1667-1687/8, p. 134 et seq. 
In the extracts given in the text, modern spelling has been 
adopted, as that of the original is rather lawless. 



108 THE LORDS BALTIMORE AND 

which Master Dogberry's charge to the watch at 
Messina was framed. 

It enumerates a number of grievances, such as 
the manner in which elections were conducted, the 
rate of taxation and other things, and mentions 
incidentally that although the Assembly cleared 
Major Truman for allowing the Indian peace 
envoys to be killed, (which was not true,) Gover- 
nor Baltimore, '^to cloak his policy," arbitrarily 
condemned him in a fine of 10,000 lbs. of 
tobacco and imprisonment during his pleasure.^ 
The petitioners seemed to think that instead of 
being punished for treacherously murdering five 
Indians he should have been held responsible for 
allowing any to escape. It was complained that " the 
Proprietary with his familiars holds forth that he 
is an absolute prince in Maryland, with as absolute 
prerogative, royal right and power, as our gracious 
Sovereign in England, and according to that they 
set their compass to steer by and govern by." " The 
grandees about St. Mary's " came in for their share 
of attention, and Lord Baltimore was accused of 
having a custom of exchanging the King's Majesty's 
subjects for fur. The particular gem of this com- 
position appears, however, when religious subjects 
come to be touched upon. This is a sample : 

"As yet we must be Nicodemuses or else the 
inquisition Avill make some say black is white and 
therefore break off with a discovery of our priests 

^ See p. 104 supra, note. 



THE MARYLAND PALATINATE 109 

and Jesuits in Maryland, which wander up and 
down in England apparelled as tradesmen and some 
otherwise, and so are sent over, but as soon as they 
come out from the ships surefooted appear in their 
plus ultra in their chapels. These black spirits 
disperse themselves all over the country in America, 
and as is saith, have £5 sterling for every turn coat 
they convert, good reason they make all the haste 
they can to set the Protestants at odds, to propagate 
the Pope^s interest and supremacy in America ; but 
will not this in time overturn the Protestants ? for 
it is decreed to bring them first into a confusion 
and ruinated nothing, and then out of the ashes 
the Pope shall spring aloft, and my Lord Baltimore 
will be canonized at Kome/^ 

Canonization as a reward for his efforts in the 
administration of his Province was probably far 
beyond Lord Baltimore's fondest dreams ; and the 
alleged plan of stimulating the zeal of missionaries, 
as though they were travelling salesmen, by paying 
a handsome commission upon conversions, reckoned 
per poll (or per soul,) is a businesslike arrangement, 
the possibilities of which are probably as completely 
overlooked by modern missionary societies as they 
were in the days of the apostles. 

The remedies proposed for all the terrible evils 
set forth in this petition were chiefly : — 

That the government should be assumed directly 
by the Crown. 

That a royal governor be appointed, and the 



110 THE LORDS BALTIMORE AND 

Lord Proprietary be reduced to the rank of land- 
lord only. 

That Protestant ministers and free schools and 
glebe lands be erected and established in every 
county, notwithstanding liberty of conscience^ and 
maintained by the people. 

Andj incidentally, that six or seven hundred 
good resolute Scotch Highlanders be sent over to 
do the fighting. 

The appointment of a Viceroy or Governor 
Generalissimo over all the American colonies was 
also recommended. 

With such fantastic allegations as are contained 
in this paper, its gross exaggerations, manifest false- 
hoods and absurdities, it is difficult to determine the 
precise boundary of truth ; but with a spirit abroad, 
such as is here revealed, and with the example of 
Bacon successfully defying the Governor's authority 
in Virginia, it is not surprising that an attempt at 
revolt was stirred up in Maryland. Insurgents, 
under the leadership of William Davis and John Pate, 
assembled in arms in Calvert County, demanding of 
the Governor and Council a redress of grievances. 
The Governor ordered them to disperse, promising 
to bring their complaints before the Assembly. This 
they refused to do, denying that the Assembly was 
a lawful one. Apparently energetic measures for the 
restoration of order promptly followed ; for Thomas 
Notley, the Deputy Governor, in writing to Lord 
Baltimore an account of the matter, briefly stated 



THE MARYLAND PALATINATE 111 

that " since Davis and Pate were hanged, the rout 
hath been much amazed and appalled, but, God 
be thanked, we now enjoy peace among ourselves, 
though never a body was more replete with malig- 
nancy than our people were about August last.'' ^ 

Governor Notley attributed the collapse of this 
revolt in Maryland not only to the execution of the 
leaders, but also to the moral effect of the termination 
of Bacon's rebellion in Virginia, which followed 
promptly upon the death of its leader, from an attack 
of malarial fever. 

There soon loomed upon the horizon of Mary- 
land an event which involved a more serious menace 
to the Province than aught that had previously 
befallen, — one which was to give rise to disputes 
and controversies extending over more than half 
a century. 

In 1681,. Charles II. made a grant of a large 
territory lying to the north of Maryland, and to 
which the name of Pennsylvania was given, to 
William Penn. Charles was indebted to the estate 
of Penn's father. Admiral Penn, in a matter of 
£16,000, and this grant of land, made in settlement 
of that debt, was no doubt very satisfactory to both 
parties. Charles paid a large debt with that which 
cost him nothing, and Penn obtained an immensely 
valuable province in exchange for a desperate claim. 
The northern limit of Maryland, it must be remem- 

1 Md. Archives: Proc. of Council, 1667-1687/8, p. 153. 



112 THE LORDS BALTIMORE AND 

bered, was placed by the charter at the fortieth 
degree of north latitude. A copy of the petition 
for the grant to Penn was submitted to Lord 
Baltimore's agents in London and they asked the 
Committee of Trade and Plantations that a clause 
be inserted specifying that the southern boundary 
of the new Province should run north of a certain 
fort or blockhouse which the Marylanders had built 
for the Susquehannough Indians, just within the 
northern boundary of Maryland. With this con- 
dition Penn expressed himself as perfectly satisfied.^ 
But when the grant was made, it was discovered that 
the southern boundary of Pennsylvania was to be 
defined by a circle drawn at twelve miles distance 
from New Castle northward and westward to the 
beginning of the fortieth degree of north latitude, 
and thence by a straight line westward. No mention 
was made of the Susquehannough fort by which 
Lord Baltimore's boundary was already marked. 

Penn appointed his kinsman, William Markham, 
as his deputy in America, and gave him a letter 
to Lord Baltimore, containing smooth expressions 
of friendship, and in which he expressed an earnest 
desire to come to an agreement about the location of 
the boundary. Shortly after, he wrote another letter 
from London jointly to several prominent Mary- 
landers seated at and near the head of the bay, 
upon lands which they held by grants from Lord 

1 Jfd Archives: Froc. of Council, 1667-1687/8, p. 272. 



THE MARYLAND PALATINATE 113 

Baltimore, included among them being the distin- 
guished Bohemian settler, Augustin Herman, whose 
plantation was the well-known Bohemia Manor in 
Cecil County. In this letter, Penn admonishes them 
that in being his friend, they will best befriend 
themselves ; and presuming that their places of 
residence fell within his patent, he advises them 
to pay no more taxes or assessments by any order 
or law of Maryland, as it would be greatly to 
their 'own wrong as well as his prejudice. He 
then inserts a subtle threat of his power with his 
superiors in England, which would enable him to 
weather the difficulty in case of non-compliance on 
their part. He adds the pious hope that " we shall all 
do the thing that is just and honest^' with the prac- 
tical reflection that it " is always wise ^^ so to do.^ 
This effort to stir up doubts in the minds of 
Lord Baltimore's tenants as to the validity of their 
titles having been made, Markham proceeded to 
make some astronomical observations ; and soon 
discovered that New Castle was twenty miles south 
of the fortieth degree of north latitude, and that 
therefore, the northern limit of a circle with a radius 
of twelve miles about that place, from which Penn's 
southern boundary was to run, would fall eight miles 

^This letter was promptly sent by the loyal Herman to 
Lord Baltimore. The original is now in the possession of 
the Maryland Historical Society. It was published in Calvert 
Papers, No. 1, p. 324, together with some other characteristic 
letters from Penn. 

8 



114 THE LORDS BALTIMORE AND 

south of Lord Baltimore's northern boundary. This 
fact having been discovered, Markham took every 
means of avoiding a meeting with Lord Baltimore's 
representatives for the purpose of settling the 
boundary, which at first he had seemed anxious 
to determine. A postponement of the survey was 
first made on account of Markham pleading sick- 
ness, and subsequently, when the Maryland com- 
missioners went repeatedly to^ New Castle by 
appointment, it was only to find Markham absent 
in New York or elsewhere. Finally, when he was 
surprised into an interview with Lord Baltimore, 
upon returning home under the belief that the 
Marylanders, who were waiting for him, had 
departed, it was found that some of the glasses 
had been mysteriously removed from his surveying 
instrument. Another instrument was, however, pro- 
cured, and the fact, which Markham had previously 
ascertained as to the location of the fortieth parallel, 
was quickly established. Markham then became 
arrogant, and asked if it were proposed to limit the 
royal authority.^ 

1 3Id. Archives : Proc. of Council, 1667-1687/ 8, pp. 377, 378. 
At this conference one of Lord Baltimore's surveyors flippantly 
and irreverently remarked that if the King could make a radius 
of 12 miles from the centre of New Castle, extend 20 miles to 
the 40th degree of north latitude, " his Majesty must have long 
compasses." To this Markham replied, with becoming 
dignity, that "he hoped they would not limit his Majesty's 
compasses." Md. Archives: Proc. of Council, 1667-1687/8, 
p. 431. 



THE MARYLAND PALATINATE 316 

It appears that Penn had persuaded himself, 
and assured his colonists, that his grant included 
the upper portion of the Chesapeake Bay, whereas 
in fact the fortieth parallel, at which the northern 
boundary of Maryland was fixed by the charter, 
passes a little to the north of the present site of 
Philadelphia. Markham continued to contrive all 
sorts of delays to avoid the determination of the 
boundary until he could communicate the facts 
to Penn and obtain fresh instructions. At last 
Penn came himself to look after his interests, and 
had several conferences with Lord Baltimore, at 
which some extraordinary propositions were made. 
He finally agreed to join Baltimore in a determi- 
nation of the latitude of the head of the Chesapeake, 
upon condition that Lord Baltimore would name a 
"gentleman's price'' per mile, at which he would 
sell the territory necessary to give Penn an outlet on 
the bay, if the survey should show that it lay south 
of the limits of his grant. And so the real ground of 
contention was revealed. Penn was determined upon 
possession of the head of the Chesapeake. If his 
charter did not give it to him, he would have it 
some other way. Meanwhile he admonished Lord 
Baltimore of the expediency of prudence, and of 
his duty to his Prince, with whom Penn claimed, 
and in fact possessed, great influence. As one 
means of shrinking the proportions of Maryland, 
Penn suggested, — and he was fortified with a letter 
from the King upon the subject, — that in order to 



116 THE LORDS BALTIMORE ANt) 

determine his northern boundary, Lord Baltimore 
should begin at the extreme southern boundary of 
Maryland and measure two degrees northward, 
allowing but sixty miles to the degree. Penn 
thought that by short measure Maryland's north 
boundary could be moved far enough south to 
suit his purpose. Baltimore rejected this round- 
about method of ascertaining the location of the 
fortieth degree, and declined to accept a letter 
from the King as modifying the plain terms of 
his charter passed under the great seal. He 
bluntly said the King had been misinformed. 
Penn then made the extraordinary proposition 
that Baltimore should surrender to him the strip 
of land which he coveted on the north of Mary- 
land, and compensate himself by moving his 
southern boundary on the eastern shore, thirty 
miles to the southward, seizing upon the inter- 
vening territory which belonged to Virginia. This 
proposition Lord Baltimore also rejected ; but the 
suggestion sadly shows how vain was the hope 
Penn had expressed in his letter to Herman and 
others, that ^' we should all do the thing that is 
just and honest. '^ ^ 

In order to make sure of a port and harbor 
with access to the high seas, Penn had procured 
from his friend, the Duke of York, afterwards 

^Md. Archives: Proc. of Council, 1667-1687/8, pp. 379, 382, 
397. It is curious to note that the reports of these conferences 
were taken down in short hand, p. 380. 



THE MARYLAND PALATINATE 117 

James II., — to whom his brother, King Charles II., 
had made a grant of New Amsterdam, the name of 
which was now changed to New York, and all of 
which lay to the east of the Delaware, — a deed for 
certain land upon the west side of that river, including 
nearly the whole of what is now the State of Dela- 
ware. All of this land lay within the tract described 
in Baltimore's charter, and the Duke of York had 
not a shadow of title to any of it ; but a trifling 
defect like this did not trouble the conscience of 
either the grantor or grantee. Hence a new cause 
of dispute arose. 

The settlement of the contest over the boundary 
was not reached until many years after, when 
the original disputants had long been dead. Its 
further history belongs to the time of the grandson 
and great grandson of Charles, the third Lord 
Baltimore. It only remains now to say that in 
1684, the latter found it necessary again to return 
to England to counteract Penn's machinations at 
the Court, and before the Council, to work his 
ruin. After the accession of James to the throne, 
Penn, confident of the power of his influence with 
his superiors, at which he was fond of hinting, 
instituted quo warranto proceedings with a view 
of clearing the ground, so to speak, for his 
own schemes, by securing the revocation of the 
Maryland charter itself. With his complaisant 
and unscrupulous patron on the throne of England 
there is little doubt as to what the outcome would 



118 THE LORDS BALTIMORE AND 

have been ; but before a decree could be obtained, 
the English people had demanded with no uncertain 
voice by what warrant James II. continued to sit 
upon the throne while he subverted the laws of 
the land ; and that monarch was a fugitive from 
his kingdom. 

It was unfortunate for Lord Baltimore that at 
a time when his presence was urgently required in 
England, it was no less needed in Maryland. 

Upon his departure, his eldest son, Cecilius, 
having died a few years before, he appointed his 
infant son, Benedict Leonard, Governor, with a 
board of Deputy Governors, of which George 
Talbot, an Irishman and a kinsman of Lord 
Baltimore's cousin. Sir William Talbot, was named 
as first, or President. Talbot had been Surveyor 
General of the Province, a member of the Council, 
and was a zealous friend of the Proprietary ; but 
as the sequel shows his discretion was not equal 
to his zeal. 

Much friction had been caused by the behavior 
of the (collectors of the royal revenues from customs, 
and charges and counter charges of misconduct were 
made. The collectors were accused of being violent, 
arbitrary and extortionate, while they claimed that 
the King's revenues were defrauded by smuggling, 
which the proprietary government took no adequate 
means to suppress. That there was smuggling is 
no doubt true, but the Lord Proprietary's revenues, 
a part of which was derived from imposts, suffered 



THE MARYLAND PALATINATE 119 

from that as well as those of the Crown. Disputes 
and antagonisms naturally arose, and upon the 
representations of the collectors, Lord Baltimore 
was required to pay a fine of £2500 for losses to 
the royal revenues alleged to have resulted from 
his negligence in suppressing smuggling and failing 
to render assistance to the collectors.^ 

In November, 1684, not long after Baltimore's 
departure, George Talbot went on board a small 
war vessel, which had just arrived from England, 
where he found Christopher Kousby, a collector of the 
royal customs, carousing with the captain. Rousby 
appears to have been an arrogant ruffian, and his 
high handed behavior had already been the subject of 
complaint on the part of Lord Baltimore. Talbot's 
own temperament was sufficiently excitable, and 
when these two met a violent altercation quickly 
ensued, in which Talbot stabbed Rousby, killing him 
instantly. As soon as this was known, a warrant 
for his arrest on the charge of murder was issued ; 
but the captain of the vessel, who had detained him 
a prisoner on board, refused to respect the warrant, 
and carrying him off to Virginia, delivered him to the 
authorities in that colony. The Governor and Council 
of Virginia in turn refused to accede to Maryland's 
demand for the surrender of the prisoner, and placed 
him in jail at Gloucester. Lord Baltimore succeeded 
in obtaining from the Privy Council an order for 

^Md. Archives : Froc. of Council, 1667-1687/8, p. 343. 



120 THE LORDS BALTIMORE AND 

his transference to England for trial; but mean- 
while, in the midst of winter, Talbot's wife, with 
two faithful Irish servants, sailing in a small skiff 
down the bay and up the Rappahannock, rescued 
him from jail and carried him back to his manor in 
Maryland, where he for some time lay in conceal- 
ment. But in a little while he surrendered himself 
to the authorities, who, relying upon the order of 
Council for his trial in England, delivered him to 
the Governor of Virginia. The latter, in spite of 
that order, brought him to trial at Jamestown, where 
he was sentenced to death ; but this time Lord 
Baltimore succeeded in procuring a pardon from the 
King, which came just in time to save his life. 

Shortly after this another officer of the customs 
was killed, under circumstances however, which had 
no relation to his duties as an officer of the Crown ; 
but these events were easily availed of by restless 
intriguers, who continually sought the overthrow 
of the Proprietary government, to make it appear 
that that government was persistently disloyal to 
the Crown. 

Upon the accession of William and Mary, Lord 
Baltimore at once despatched a special messenger 
from England with an order to the Council to 
proclaim the new Sovereigns. The messenger died 
on the voyage and the order was not delivered. 
Consequently, William and Mary were proclaimed 
in Virginia and New England while Maryland 
reraained silent. A second messenger was despatched, 



THE MARYLAND PALATINATE 121 

but the mischief caused by the delay had been 
wrought. The malcontents seized upon it as evi- 
dence of Lord Baltimore's adherence to the cause 
of the dethroned monarch. It was just at this 
time, it will be remembered, that he was outlawed 
in Trelandj — a country in which he declared he had 
never been, — upon the charge of treason committed 
there.^ How little reason he had to be attached 
to the cause of James, and how unlikely he would 
be to render him assistance, will be appreciated when 
it is considered that that same James, when Duke 
of York, had given Penn a deed for a portion of 
Lord Baltimore's territory, and that Lord Baltimore 
was at that time in England for the express purpose 
of resisting proceedings by which it was sought to 
deprive him of the whole of his American Province, 
for the benefit of James's friend and protege, Penn. 
The only evidence of any support having been 
given by Lord Baltimore to the cause of James is 
in a letter ^ to him from the government of Mary- 
land, in which he is congratulated upon his heroic 
action in raising a troop for his Majesty's service. 
That he really did so, seems extremely improbable, 
though it is quite possible that some of his Irish 
tenantry may have joined the standard of James. 

^ See p. 100 supra. 

^ This is a long letter giving an account of public affairs in 
the Province. The concluding paragraph contains the allusion 
to the troop. Md. Archives: Proc. of Council, 1687/8-1693, 
p. 65. 



122 THE LORDS BALTIMORE AND 

The expression in the letter that this act would 
tend ^' to the greater glory of God/' — those words, 
or rather their Latin equivalent, Ad majorem Dei 
gloriam, being the motto of the Society of Jesus, — 
suggests the probability that the w^^iter was one of 
its members or disciples, whose sympathies would 
naturally be with the exiled king. 

In addition to the charges brought against him 
in relation to the customs revenues. Lord Balti- 
more had been accused of treating the Protestants 
unfairly ; and now the time to strike was ripe. 
A rumor was started that the Roman Catholics 
had entered into a conspiracy with the Indians 
to murder all the Protestants in the Province, 
and that large bodies of the savages were actu- 
ally moving on the settlements. Means of com- 
munication Avere slow, and it took time for posi- 
tive information to be obtained. It was reported 
at the lower settlements that massacres were being 
perpetrated in the uplands, and at the uplands that 
they were in progress below. Messengers, that were 
sent hither and thither, found the people arming to 
go to the rescue of the settlers at places which they 
had themselves just quitted, leaving all at peace. 
The matter being investigated, some of the leading 
people, most of them Protestants, and among them 
Kenelm Cheseldyn, the speaker of the lower house, 
put forth a declaration to the effect that all this alarm 
was ^^ but a sleeveless fear and imagination, fomented 
by the artifice of some ill minded persons who are 



THE MARYLAND PALATINATE 123 

studious and ready to take all occasions of raising 
disturbances for their own private and malicious 
interest.'^ 

The excitement, however, was not stayed. John 
Coode, who had been associated with Fendall in 
sedition and an attempted insurrection ten years 
before, was the chief instigator. Coode had been 
a Roman Catholic and then a Protestant; once a 
clergyman, and now a blatant and blasphemous 
atheist. He gathered an armed force, and with his 
associates put forth a declaration replete with the 
well-worn cries of ^^ popery '^ and '' Jesuit,^' and in 
which the tyrannical character of the popish gov- 
ernment of Lord Baltimore was duly dilated upon. 
This declaration, incredible as it may seem, bore the 
signatures, or at least, the names of some of the 
men who but a little while before had denounced as 
false the malicious rumors upon which the declara- 
tion was based. 

The force led by Coode besieged the members of the 
Council in a fort at Mattapony, in which they had 
taken refuge, and obtained their surrender. These 
insurgents then organized themselves under the title 
of Associators, and for a while carried things with a 
high hand, imprisoning not only Roman Catholics, 
but also any Protestants who resisted their law- 
less proceedings. Plunderings, and threateniugs of 
death, were their means of coercing remonstrants. 
Addresses were sent to King William, urging him 
to take possession of the Province and appoint a 



124 THE LORDS BALTIMORE AND 

governor to administer its affairs in the name of 
the Crown. William of Orange did not feel himself 
particularly bound by the promises and grants of 
his predecessors, the Stuarts, and recognized the 
advantage of attaching more closely to the Crown 
the growing value and power of the American 
colonies. He was not slow therefore to heed these 
complaints, and, in 1691, asserted the royal authority 
over the Province, by the apj)ointment of Sir Lionel 
Copley as Governor for the Crown, who arrived in 
the Province during the following year. This action 
was taken after the rendering of an extraordinary 
opinion by Lord Chief Justice Holt, which was in 
substance, that though it would be better that some 
inquisition were held and a forfeiture of the charter 
found, yet as the case was pressing the King might 
act, and let the investigation follow. The action 
was evidently determined upon in advance, and legal 
or constitutional difficulties could not be allowed to 
stand in the way.^ 

From this time, that is, from 1692 until 1715, 
a period of twenty-three years, the administration 
of the Province was in the hands of governors 
appointed by the Crown. The authority of the 
Lords Baltimore was in abeyance. They were no 
longer Absolute Lords as prescribed in the charter 

^ For a criticism of this opinion, see McMahon, Hist. View 
of the Govt, of Md., p. 242, note. Arguments similar to those 
of the Chief Justice, might be urged in justification of lynch- 
law. 



THE MARYLAND PALATINATE 125 

of Maryland, but they remained Proprietaries, in 
the sense that they were lords of the soil. They 
were deprived of the right of government, but their 
territorial rights were not infringed. 

From the time of the assumption of the govern- 
ment of the Province by the Crown, Charles, Lord 
Baltimore, seems to have disappeared from public 
life. He was reduced from the rank of a count 
palatine, with princely authority, to that of a mere 
landlord, entitled only to the rents of his estates, 
the quit-rents from tenants, and the impost duties on 
tobacco. His right to the latter, though disputed by 
the Assembly, was confirmed by the royal authority. 

Before his accession to the title, Charles had many 
years' experience in the government of Maryland 
under the guiding hand of his father, Cecilius ; 
and, residing in the Province, he had a more inti- 
mate knowledge than the latter could possibly have, 
of the conditions, the needs, and the character- 
istics of the people. He seems to have inherited 
his father's strict sense of justice and fairness, but 
to have fallen very far short of him in breadth 
of mind and in the spirit of liberality. At the same 
time it must be remembered that he had changed 
conditions with which to deal. Cecilius had his 
conflicts with the members of a religious society, 
who disputed the extent of his jurisdiction, and 
even his territorial rights ; with persistent attacks 
from Claiborne and others of the Virginia Company ; 
with open rebellion ; and with the overthrow of his 



126 THE LORDS BALTIMORE AND 

authority, by commissioners acting under authority 
of Parliament. The freemen, however, those who 
were entitled to vote, and to a voice in legislation, 
remained in large proportion of the same class as the 
original settlers, those who came out prepared to 
take up lands and become freeholders. But with the 
first colonists, and after them, came a large number 
of indentured servants, and, at a later date, some less 
desirable persons, convicts bound over to masters 
for a term of years in lieu of confinement in jail. 
All these persons, indentured servants and convicts 
alike, were entitled, when their terms of service were 
ended, to acquire lands and become freemen, with the 
right to vote, and to representation in the Assembly. 
In fact in the paper issued at the time of the insur- 
rection headed by Davis and Pate, it was admitted 
by the petitioners that '' a great many of us came in 
as servants to others,^' but, as offsetting this, a fling 
was added, " and so was my Lord Baltimore but an 
inferior Irish Lord, and as is saith, one of the Pope's 
privy agents in England." 

With the acquisition of the franchise by persons 
of this class, the character of the representation was 
materially changed. The Assembly had become 
more democratic and was strongly imbued with 
the lessons taught by the actions of the House of 
Commons during the Commonwealth in England. 
Lord Baltimore met the changed conditions by limit- 
ing the suffrage with a property qualification, and still 
further, — falling back upon the strict letter of his 



THE MABYLANB PALATINATE 127 

charter, — by summoning to the Assembly only a 
portion of the delegates elected. It may be assumed 
that he exercised a prudent caution in the selection 
of those to whom the summons was issued, and so 
secured a more manageable legislature than would 
otherwise have been possible. His method of deal- 
ing with the representatives of the people was 
somewhat high handed. Upon occasion of differ- 
ence it was his practice, during his residence in 
Maryland, to call the delegates to meet him in 
the upper house, where he presided, and by the 
weight of his personal authority, enforce his views 
upon them. He was disposed to be autocratic, but 
at the same time, no act of his can be pointed to 
as actually indicative of unfairness or injustice. He 
was scrupulous in maintaining the principles of 
religious toleration established by his father, and 
on one occasion when a grant of one hundred 
thousand pounds of tobacco was voted to him by 
the Assembly, as an expression of gratitude, and 
appreciation of his benign administration, he declined 
the gift on the ground that it would impose too 
heavy a burden on the tax payers, ^'considering the 
great charge the country hath already been at." ^ 
We recognize in him a fair and just man, but 
one lacking in many respects the largeness of view 
and conciliatory disposition by which his father 
was distinguished. His administration of the affairs 

^Md. Archives: Proc. of Assembly, 1678-1683, p. 516. 



128 THE LORDS BALTIMORE AND 

of the Province, though sometimes arbitrary, was 
eminently humane, and those who sought a panacea 
for all ills by the overthrow of his government, 
and the establishment of that of the Crown, had 
yet to learn, like the malcontents of old who 
demanded a king to rule over them, that a royal 
yoke is not always easy. 

The first wife of Charles, Lord Baltimore, was 
Jane, the widow of Henry Sewall, who had been 
Secretary of the Province. She was the daughter of 
Vincent Lowe. After Lord Baltimore's return to 
England in 1684, he continued to reside in that 
country until his death on February 20, 1714/5. 
He was eighty-five years of age at the time of his 
death, and, it has been stated, was thrice married.^ 
His death occurred but shortly before the restoration 
of the government in Maryland to the administration 
of the Proprietary. 

In order to complete the chain of events in the 
development of the story of the Maryland Palatinate, 
it will be necessary to review briefly the changes 
which occurred in the period of twenty-three years, 
from 1692 to 1715, during which the Palatinate 
government was suspended, and the affairs of the 
Province administered under governors appointed 
by the Crown. 

It has already been mentioned that acting under 
advice of the Privy Council, and fortified by the 

^Morris: The Lords Baltimore; Md. Hist. Soc, p. 43. 



THE MARYLAND PALATINATE 129 

opinion of Lord Chief Justice Holt, King William 
decided to assume control of the Province for the 
Crown, and appointed as Governor, Sir Lionel 
Copley, the first royal governor of Maryland. 

Upon arriving in the colony, Sir Lionel immedi- 
ately terminated the provisional government which 
had been set up and conducted as a sort of dragonade 
by the Associators, and convened an Assembly. To 
this body he made a very wise address, counselling 
the laying aside of all heats and animosities, and 
the observance of moderation in their acts. This, 
however, was not what the delegates wanted. The 
first Act of the Assembly was naturally one of recog- 
nition of the authority of William and Mary, and 
to this was added an address expressing gratitude 
to their Majesties for taking the Province under the 
protection of the royal authority, and delivering 
it from the "tyrannical Popish government under 
which they had long groaned.'^ 

The second law passed was one for the establish- 
ment of the Church of England, and the imposition 
of a tax of forty pounds of tobacco per poll for 
the support of the clergy of that Church. The 
principal features of this bill under which there 
was, for the first time, an established Church in 
Maryland, have already been noted in the preceding 
lecture. 

While the government of the Lord Proprietary 
had been overthrown, the Crown respected his 
rights as Proprietor ; the Maryland Assembly now 
9 



130 THE LORDS BALTIMORE AND 

proceeded to attack these. The King had distinctly 
recognized the right of Lord Baltimore to collect 
and receive one-half of the duty on tobacco exported, 
which had by law been appropriated for his private 
use, and also a tonnage duty of 14d. per ton upon 
vessels clearing from any port of the Province. 
The Maryland Assembly undertook to dispute these 
rights, and to harass Lord Baltimore's agents in their 
attempts to collect his private revenues. He had 
again to appeal to the King, who specially instructed 
Sir Lionel Copley to take care that the agents of Lord 
Baltimore should be permitted to live peaceably and 
quietly, and to act as formerly in receiving his Lord- 
ship's dues and revenues in the Province, and that no 
vessels should be cleared from it until they had paid 
their shipping dues. Notwithstanding the mandate 
of the King, the lower house was slow to relinquish 
its grasp on a source of revenue which it thought 
could be successfully confiscated for the use of the 
commonwealth. Mr. Henry Darnall, who had been 
Receiver General, and was now Lord Baltimore's 
agent, petitioned the Governor and Council, in 1692, 
that the records and accounts belonging to the Pro- 
prietary be delivered to him, that he be allowed 
possession of his Lordship's houses and plantations, 
and that ports be designated at which the tonnage 
duty should be paid. The matter was referred to 
the lower house, which assented to the surrender of 
the accounts, with the exception of the land records, 
but denied the Proprietary's right to the tonnage 



THE MARYLAND PALATINATE 131 

duty, asserting that it was levied for the defence 
of the colony. The matters in dispute were at 
length appealed to the King in Council, when the 
action of the Maryland Assembly was disallowed 
and the claim of the Proprietary to the tonnage 
dues, to one-half of the export duty of 2s. per hhd. 
on tobacco, and free access to the land records was 
confirmed. 

The City of St. Mary's, where the first settlers 
had established themselves, where a State House 
had been erected, and which was still the seat of 
government, was the next victim of the changed 
influences at work. It is true that it was situated 
at a remote corner of the Province and was incon- 
venient of access to settlers established along the 
upper portion of the bay, and at the heads of the 
rivers. A more central location, near the old Puritan 
settlement on the banks of the Severn, was selected 
as the future seat of the government and thither 
it was removed in 1694. To this place was given 
the name of Ann Arundel Town, afterwards changed 
to Annapolis. The " Mayor, Recorder, Aldermen, 
Common Councilmen and Freemen '^ of St. Mary's 
presented a humble petition/ against the removal 
of the seat of government, pleading ancient usage, 
and pointing out how the value of property at that 
place would be destroyed and themselves ruined by 
such action ; but all the associations with St. Mary's 

' Md. Archives: Proc.lqf Assembly, 1693-1697, p. 71 et seq. 



132 THE LORDS BALTIMORE AND 

were connected with the Proprietary government, 
and for such associations, those now in authority 
entertained no sentiment. 

The address was referred to the lower house, and 
by that body the petition of St. Mary's was rejected 
in terms of contempt and brutal insolence. The 
language of the Assembly's reply marks a distinct 
fall from the amenities which had prevailed under the 
sway of the Proprietaries, when, whatever differences 
and animosities may at times have arisen, in mutual 
intercourse, the forms of courtesy were ordinarily 
observed. 

Sir Lionel Copley died in 1693, and Francis 
Nicholson, who had been commissioned Lieutenant- 
Governor, was absent in England. Sir Edmund 
Andros, who was then serving as Governor of 
Virginia, thereupon assumed the Governorship of 
Maryland, claiming authority under a commission 
authorizing him to do so in the event of Nicholson's 
death. Nicholson was not dead, but liberal inter- 
pretation of his powers was not unusual with Sir 
Edmund. The Assembly, however, objected to this 
ante mortem administration of the office of a living 
man, and Sir Edmund retired, leaving the govern- 
ment to be administered by the President of the 
Council until Nicholson's arrival. 

As illustrating the character of one of the principal 
leaders in the movement which led to what has been 
called the Maryland revolution, it may be mentioned 
that the ex-priest Coode, the chief agitator at that 



THE MARYLAND PALATINATE 133 

time, was returned as a member of the Assembly of 
1696 ; but Governor Nicholson, knowing him to be a 
chronic promoter of sedition, and that he had boasted 
" that he had pulled down one government and could 
pull down another/' refused to administer the oath, 
basing his refusal upon the ground that he was in 
Holy Orders and therefore ineligible; ^^once a priest, 
always a priest,'' the Governor maintained. This 
worthy was shortly afterwards indicted for blas- 
phemy, among other charges, and fled to Virginia. 
The royal governors appear to have been, for the 
most part, judicious men, who sought to discharge the 
duties of their office faithfully. Of Sir Lionel Copley, 
and the brief episode of Sir Edmund Andros, men- 
tion has already been made. Francis Nicholson had 
had experience in colonial government, both in New 
York and Virginia. He was a man of force and 
statesmanlike views, and conducted his adminis- 
tration with ability. His vanity, however, was 
inordinate, his temper was irascible, and his private 
life appears not to have been above reproach. He 
was an earnest supporter of the royal authority 
and active in promoting the cause of the established 
Church. His chief claim to consideration is, per- 
haps, due to the fact that he zealously advocated the 
cause of education and sought earnestly to secure 
the establishment of a college in Maryland. He 
had secured the foundation of William and Mary 
College in Virginia, and his efforts in Maryland 
resulted, in 1696, in the establishment of King 



134 THE LORDS BALTIMORE AND 

William School at Annapolis, to the support of 
which he was himself a generous contributor. 

He was succeeded in 1698 by Nathaniel Black- 
istone, who retired in 1701, on account of enfeebled 
health. It is an indication of the esteem in which 
he was held in the colony that, upon his departure 
for England, he was requested by the Assembly 
to act as its agent, to look after the interests of 
the Province with Crown and Parliament. The 
next royal governor was John Seymour, who was 
appointed in 1704, the office having been, mean- 
while, administered by Edward Lloyd, President 
of the Council. That Seymour was a staunch, or 
rather a strenuous Protestant, is shown by the char- 
acter of an harangue^ he made on September 11, 
1 704, to two Roman Catholic priests brought before 
him on the charge of saying Mass in public. In this 
truculent screed he uttered several direful threats, 
and closed by admonishing them that he was an 
" English Protestant gentleman, and could never 
equivocate.^' 

In 1708, Governor Seymour came into collision 
with the Assembly. He had sought to have 
Annapolis incorporated as a city, but failing in 
his efforts with the Assembly, he granted a muni- 
cipal charter himself The Assembly was at once 
upon enquiry. The Lords Proprietary had power 
under the charter of Maryland to erect towns, 

^ Printed in Scharf s History of Maryland, Vol. i, p. 368. 



TEE MARYLAND PALATINATE 135 

cities, establish ports, etc., but did a royal governor 
have similar authority? The Assembly demanded 
to see the Governor's commission; whereupon it 
was discovered that he had exceeded his authority. 
After some bickering the charter of Annapolis was 
finally granted by the Assembly. 

In 1709, Governor Seymour died, and the Gov- 
ernorship again devolved upon Edward Lloyd, 
President of the Council, and so remained until 
the appointment of John Hart, the last of the 
royal governors, in 1714, one year before the 
restoration of the Proprietary government. 

The period of the royal governors witnessed a 
marked change in the constitutional character of 
the government of the Province. The lower house 
of the Assembly acquired larger powers as a co- 
ordinate branch of the legislative body, and sought 
continually to extend those powers. It called in 
question the powers of the governors, as in the case 
of Governor Seymour's attempt to grant a charter 
to Annapolis, and held them to the letter of their 
commissions. The proceedings of the Assembly 
at times may seem much like those of a college 
debating society ; but it was the school in which the 
assertion of liberty found expression, and wherein 
was obtained the training which, two generations 
later, showed the freemen of the American colonies 
qualified to take their part as the legislators of 
an infant nation. 

The various grievances alleged by the Associators 



136 THE LORDS BALTIMORE AND 

in 1689, in the petition to the King, inviting him 
to assume the government of the Province, have 
already been noted. The petition served its purpose. 
But, it is worthy of note that, in 1701, when a 
bill was introduced in Parliament looking to the 
destruction of the charters of Massachusetts, New 
Hampshire, Rhode Island, Connecticut, East and 
West Jersey, Pennsylvania, Maryland and the 
Bahama Islands, and their conversion into royal 
governments, a letter was addressed by the Lords 
Commissioners of Trade to the government of 
Maryland, enquiring particularly as to " the ill- 
conduct of Proprietary governments, especially of 
Maryland when under that government." Now 
was the chance to substantiate the complaints of 
1689. The letter was laid before the Council, 
which was no longer composed of appointees of the 
Proprietary. The members were able to think of 
but five grievances : — these were, that there had been 
no oath of allegiance to the Crown required, but 
only the oaths of office and fidelity to the Proprie- 
tary, (which was in accordance with the charter) ; 
that the laws of the Province were not transmitted 
to the King for allowance, (which was also strictly 
in conformity with the charter) ; that there were 
no appeals to England from the decisions of the 
courts, and that the judgment of the upper house 
was final in all causes, (also charter rights) ; that 
two collectors of customs had been murdered in 
the execution of their office, (which was not true,) 



THE MARYLAND PALATINATE 137 

though they added that this was not chargeable 
against the government ; and, finally, that the 
tonnage duty of 14d. per ton on tobacco belonged 
to the Province, (in respect to which the Privy 
Council had, nine years before, after examination 
of the subject, decided otherwise). Not one single 
charge of tyranny, oppression, abuse of power, or 
official misconduct, was laid against the Proprietary 
or the Proprietary government as such, now when 
the opportunity for complaint was given, and a 
report upon the subject was not only encouraged 
but especially demanded by the Crown. 



LECTURE V. 

Benedict Leonard, Fourth Lord Baltimore. 

Charles, Fifth Lord Baltimore. 

Frederick, Sixth Lord Baltimore. 

UPON the death of Charles, third Baron, which 
occurred on February 20, 1714/5, his son, 
Benedict Leonard, succeeded to the title, which he 
held, however, for a few weeks only, as his own 
death followed on April 5, of the same year (1715). 

Benedict Leonard had, in 1713, publicly renounced 
the Roman Catholic faith and attached himself to the 
Church of England. The immediate effect of this 
change of religious faith or allegiance was twofold. 
In the first place it excited the wrath of his father, 
who had adhered to his Church regardless of the 
effect upon his temporal fortunes, and in the second 
place it paved the way for the restoration of the 
Proprietary government in Maryland. 

The old Lord Baltimore manifested his displeasure 
by withdrawing an allowance of £450 yearly which 
he had made to his son, and the latter was conse- 
quently obliged to depend upon his wife's portion for 
the means of living, and for the education of his chil- 
dren, who had been at Roman Catholic seminaries 
138 



THE MARYLAND PALATINATE 139 

on the continent of Europe at their grandfather^s 
charge, but were now placed at Protestant schools 
in England. Under these circumstances Benedict 
applied for relief to Queen Anne, who granted him 
a pension of £300 during his father's lifetime, and 
at his instance appointed John Hart Governor of 
Maryland, who agreed to allow Benedict an addi- 
tional sum of £500 yearly out of the revenues of 
his office. Upon the accession of George I., Benedict 
laid the state of the case before him, and obtained 
a continuance of the pension allowed by Queen 
Anne, and the renewal of Hart's commission as 
Governor. 

Charles, Lord Baltimore, lived but a short time after 
these events, and the news of Benedict Leonard's 
succession as Proprietary had hardly been received 
in Maryland before it was followed by the announce- 
ment of his death. There is therefore no record of 
acts of his as Proprietary. 

In 1684 when he was a child, not more than five or 
six years of age, he had been appointed by his father 
titular Governor of Maryland, during the latter's 
absence in England, with the actual administration 
vested in a board of deputies. No record of the 
birth of Benedict Leonard has been found, but from 
a letter written by his father, dated July 9, 1679,^ 
in which the circumstance is referred to, that the 
young gentleman had not yet cut his teeth, it may 

^ Md. Hist. Soc, Calvert Papers, No. 1, p. 307. 



140 THE LORDS BALTIMORE AND 

reasonably be assumed that his birth occurred not 
very many months prior to that date. 

On January 2, 1698/9, he was married to Lady 
Charlotte Lee, from whom he is said to have been 
divorced in 1705/ six years after his marriage, she 
having in the meanwhile borne him seven children. 
She was the daughter of the Earl of Litchfield, and 
granddaughter of Charles II. and Barbara Palmer, 
whom Charles created Duchess of Cleveland, and 
who is described by Macaulay as the " superb and 
voluptuous. ^^ Having become a Protestant, Bene- 
dict was elected, during the last year of his life, 
member of Parliament for Harwich in Essex. 
V Charles, the fifth Baron, succeeded to the title upon 
the death of his father, on April 5, 1715. He was 
then but sixteen years of age, and his guardian. Lord 
Guilford, lost no time in representing to the King, 
George I., the fact that his ward was a Protestant, 
and that therefore no political reason existed for 
delaying the restoration to him of the government 
of the Maryland Province. The King was equally 
prompt to act, and in May, 1715, the Palatinate 
authority was restored to the infant Lord Baltimore 
under the terms of the original charter granted 
eighty-three years before. 

We have seen with what excitement, with what 
denunciations and violence, certain agitators had 
taken advantage of the political disturbances in 

^Morris, The Lords Baltimore; Md. Hist. Soc; p. 43. 



THE MARYLAND PALATINATE 141 

England to secure the overthrow of the Proprie- 
tary government in 1689. Twenty-six years later 
the restoration of that government did not cause 
a ripple or a whisper of discontent. A proclamation 
was issued announcing that the thing had been 
done. John Hart, the royal governor, was recom- 
missioned as governor for the Proprietary, writs 
which had been issued in the name of the Crown 
for the election of delegates to the Assembly were 
recalled, and new writs issued to which the old 
great seal of the Lord Proprietary was affixed,^ 
and that was all. An address was adopted by 
the Assembly expressing satisfaction that with the 
restored government they were ^^put on a wholly 
Protestant establishment,^' but there seems to have 
been some suspicion lurking that the ncAV Proprie- 
tary might have inherited some of the prejudices of 
his ancestors in favor of religious toleration, for 
they hastened to add the assurance that " Papists 
are secure while they remain good subjects."^ 

Two years later, an address signed by the speaker 
and fifty-two members of the lower house, applauds 
his Lordship's ^^ compassion for truly scrupulous 
consciences," and assures him that the writers 
" feel the same for those that are inoffensive to 
the government and do not pervert Protestants to 

^For a history and description of this seal, see the author's 
monograph, entitled The Great Seal of Maryland. Md. Hist. 
Soc, Fund Publication, No. 23, (1885), 

2 TIM Hist. Soc, Coll. Calvert 3fSS., Doc. 257. 



142 THE LORDS BALTIMORE AND 

the superstitions of the Church of Rome/' His 
Lordship is warned against heeding complaints 
from any such. He is cautioned "not to listen 
to them/'i 

Charles, Lord Baltimore, was married in July, 
1730, to Mary, daughter of Sir Thomas Jannsen 
of Surrey, from whom he afterwards obtained a 
partial divorce.^ She bore him three children, 
Frederick, who succeeded to the title, Louisa, who 
afterwards became Mrs. Browning, and Caroline, 
who was the wife of Governor Eden of Maryland. 
In both character and ability Charles fell very far 
short of his grandfather and namesake. Some of 
his letters, addressed to the governors of Maryland, 
exhibit a querulous temper in marked contrast to 
the dignified tone in which his ancestors conveyed 
instructions, or if need were, expressed disapproval 
of what had been done. He was nevertheless not 
without accomplishments, and during his travels 
abroad, upon the continent of Europe, made a very 
favorable impression upon Frederick the Great, of 
Prussia, then Crown Prince.^ It was in 1739 that, 
returning from Russia, he visited the Prince at 
Reinsberg, where he remained five days. Frederick 
wrote of him to Voltaire : " This milord is a very 

^Md. Hist. Soc, Coll. Calvert 3ISS., Doc. 262. 

•'3Id. Hist. Sac, Coll. Calvert MSS., Doe. 432. 

3 Carlyle, History of Frederick the Great, 1858, Vol. ii, p. 665 ; 
and Morris, The Lords Baltimore, pp. 45-52, where several 
references to authorities are given. 



THE MARYLAND PALATINATE 143 

sensible man, who possesses a great deal of knowl- 
edge and thinks like us that sciences can be no 
disparagement to nobility nor degrade an illustrious 
rank. I admire the genius of this Anglais as one 
does a fine face through a crape veil. He speaks 
French very ill, and yet one likes to hear him speak 
it ; and as for his English, he pronounces it so 
quick there is no possibility of following him.'' 

Indeed, Frederick was so pleased with the lofty 
discourse he held with his visitor that he addressed 
him a rhymed epistle on the subject of liberty of 
thought in England which began with the words : 
'^ L^ esprit libre, Milord, qui regne en Angleterre.''^ 

To another correspondent Frederick wrote touch- 
ing Lord Baltimore's visit, that ^^ we talked much 
of philosophy, of art, of science, in short of all that 
can be included in the taste of cultivated people." 

Carlyle, in his History of Frederick the Great, 
remarks that "for the sake of this small transit 
over the sun's disc, I have made some enquiry about 
Baltimore, but found very little, perhaps enough." 

Walpole's estimate of him was less flattering than 
that of Frederick; he describes him as "a very 
good-natured, weak, honest man," and credits him 
with the possession of " a good deal of jumbled 
knowledge." ^ Lord Hervey bluntly puts it, in 
one of his letters to Horace Mann, "there is my 
Lord Baltimore, who thinks he understands every- 

1 Walpole's Letters to Mann, Vol. ii, 176 (1843). 



144 THE LORDS BALTIMORE AND 

thing and understands nothing; who wants to be 
well with both courts, and is well at neither, and 
entre nous is a little mad." 

Such were the somewhat conflicting opinions enter- 
tained by his contemporaries of the man to whom 
was restored the Proprietary government of Mary- 
land. In truth, his reputation in England suffered 
not a little from his intimacy with the disreputable 
and dissolute Frederick Lewis, Prince of Wales. In 
1731 he was appointed Gentleman of the Bedchamber 
to that Prince, and seems to have been employed 
by the latter upon certain missions, and in intrigues, 
that were sufficiently discreditable to both. His 
reputation for an interest in science secured his 
election as a Fellow of the Royal Society, and he 
was member of Parliament, first for St. Germain^s 
in Cornwall, and afterwards from the County of 
Surrey. In 1741 he was appointed Lord of the 
Admiralty and six years later Cofferer to the Prince 
of Wales and Surveyor General of his lands in 
Cornwall.^ He died in 1751, a year before the 
Prince, whose favor he had continued to retain. 

The Maryland Province, the government of which 
was restored to Charles, was a very different one 
from that over which his grandfather had exercised 
authority twenty-six years before. The charter was 
unaltered; Lord Baltimore was, on parchment at 
least, as his ancestors had been in fact. Absolute 

il/cL Hist. Soc, Coll. Calvert 3ISS., Docs. 96, 97. 



THE MARYLAND PALATINATE 145 

Lord and Proprietary. But all vestige of auto- 
cratic authority had been swept away. The lower 
house of Assembly no longer regarded its powers 
as limited by the charter, but adopted as its model 
the House of Commons. The latter had acquired 
great increase of power since the time of the Tudors 
and the Stuarts ; why should they not also ? More- 
over they had been trained to resistance. The royal 
authority had been sought as a relief from that of 
the Proprietary, but when it was found to bear 
heavily, the means of resistance was found, a more 
active political life had been awakened, and the 
lesson of resistance once learned was not likely to 
be forgotten. 

There was one clause in the charter which 
admirably served the purpose. In the tenth section 
of that instrument, it was provided as a special 
grace and privilege, that the settlers in the Province, 
and their children and descendants born there, 
should be regarded as natives of the Kingdom of 
England and Ireland, should be treated as such, 
with power to inherit or purchase lands in England, 
and likewise should possess all the privileges, fran- 
chises and liberties of the Kingdom of England, 
and enjoy the same in the same manner as the 
liegemen of the Crown born within the Kingdom 
of England. 

These provisions were now seen in a new light. 
Upon the accession of William and Mary the 
English Parliament had embodied the constitutional 
10 



146 THE LORDS BALTIMORE AND 

rights which they asserted, in a Bill of Rights, to 
remove forever the danger of the liberties of the 
people being invaded as they had been by the 
Stuarts. Divine right, or any right to the throne, 
other than that which is derived from Act of Par- 
liament, was swept away. The Maryland colonists 
were not slow to see that if under the charter of 
Maryland they were entitled to all the liberties and 
franchises of native-born Englishmen, an enlarge- 
ment of the constitutional liberties of the people in 
England worked an enlargement of their own as 
well. But years were to elapse before these doc- 
trines, although already at work, found expression 
in resolutions of the Assembly. 

During the royal government the population of 
Maryland had but slightly increased. Some of 
the motives for immigration had been destroyed. 
Under the Proprietary government the Province 
had been a sort of haven of refuge for all who 
were oppressed upon religious grounds, — whether 
Roman Catholics or Protestant non-conformists. 
But upon the establishment of the Church of 
England the laws in relation to religious non- 
conformity became practically the same as those 
that prevailed in the mother country, though, as 
a matter of fact, the enforcement of the penal 
statutes upon this subject, as a result probably 
of long established custom in favor of religious 
liberty, was of rare occurrence. 

In 1722, the disposition to extend to Maryland 



!rs:E Maryland palatinate 14? 

the English commoD law and the statutes of that 
country, except those that were of obvious local 
application, found expression in a resolution of the 
lower house of Assembly extending to Maryland 
the operation of an English statute, contrary to the 
decision of the Provincial Court upon the subject. 
This action was dissented from by the upper house 
and disallowed by the Governor ; but it marks the 
increasing tendency to ignore the strict provisions 
of the charter and fall back upon the law of 
England, a natural result of a quarter of a century 
of royal domination. 

The most important subject of interest at this 
period, as affecting not only the rights of the 
Lord Proprietary, but the interests of the Province 
itself, and those of the future State which was to 
arise upon the final termination of the Provincial 
government, was the boundary dispute with the 
Penns — the sons and heirs of William Penn, the 
original grantee of Pennsylvania. The condition 
of that controversy upon the accession of William 
and Mary, and the probable escape of the charter 
of Maryland from abrogation, by the flight of 
James II., have been already referred to. 

Mention has also been made of the unsuccessful 
efforts of William Penn to persuade the elder 
Charles, Lord Baltimore, to surrender a portion 
of Maryland so as to enable the former to gain a 
broad strip of fertile land, together with an outlet 
to navigable water at the head of the Chesapeake 



148 THE LORDS BALTIMORE AND 

Bay, and of the persistent refusal of Penn and 
his agents to join in an astronomical determination 
of the true location of the boundary by observa- 
tions made on the spot. The grant to Penn of 
Delaware, or the three lower counties, as the region 
on the west shore of the Delaware Bay was called, 
was made by the Duke of York, who himself had 
no title to convey. But it was uphill work for 
Lord Baltimore to attack a grant made by the 
brother of the King and heir apparent to the 
throne, although the entire tract was included in 
Lord Baltimore's original patent from Charles I. 

The question was referred at Penn's instance to 
the Lords of Trade. The grantor had then become 
King, and Lord Baltimore's chances of success 
were even less than before. 

In the preamble to the charter of Maryland 
it was declared that the purpose Avas to establish 
an English colony in a region hactenus inculta, — 
hitherto uncultivated, — and partly occupied by 
savages. Then followed the grant in which the 
limits of the territory were defined. It was urged 
on Penn's behalf that the words hactenus inGulta^ 
although they in fact formed no part of a condi- 
tion of Lord Baltimore's charter, excluded from its 
operation any lands occupied by civilized colonists, 
and that there were Dutch settlements on the 
western shore of the Delaware. It does not seem 
likely, even if the words quoted could be regarded 
as words of limitation, which they were not, that 



THE MARYLAND PALATINATE 149 

it was any part of the intention of Charles I., 
who claimed for the British Crown the continent 
of North America by virtue of Cabot^s discoveries, 
to include in the grant to Lord Baltimore a pro- 
vision for respecting or confirming the title of 
Dutch settlers in any part of this domain. His 
subsequent grant of New Amsterdam to the Duke 
of York clearly shows that he had no such purpose. 
As a matter of fact, at the time the charter of 
Maryland was granted there were no such settle- 
ments upon the west shore of the Delaware Bay. 
There had been a small settlement made by the 
Dutch in 1630, but the colonists were all killed 
the following year by the Indians ; and the next 
to settle upon that region were Swedes, and not 
Dutch, who came in 1638, six years after the 
date of Lord Baltimore's charter. But neither 
facts, nor arguments, could overcome the more 
powerful considerations that Penn stood high in the 
favor of the King and that he earnestly desired 
an outlet and water way for his Province of Penn- 
sylvania. The decision was made therefore that a 
line should be run due west from Cape Henlopen 
on the Delaware, to the Chesapeake, and from the 
middle point of this line, one should be run north to 
the fortieth parallel and so divide the region in two, 
giving the eastern half on the Delaware to Penn, 
and leaving the western half on the Chesapeake 
still a part of Maryland. 

After the proceedings instituted by Penn for the 



150 THE LORDS BALTIMORE AND 

purpose of annulling the charter of Maryland had 
come to an end upon the accession of William and 
Mary and the appointment of a royal governor 
for Maryland, some years elapsed before anything 
further was heard of the boundary dispute; but 
after the restoration of the Proprietary govern- 
ment it was revived, the disputants being then 
Charles, fifth Lord Baltimore, and Thomas and 
Eichard Penn, sons of William Penn. 

The disputed title, and doubt as to the location 
of the boundary, led to a condition of border law- 
lessness throughout the debatable ground. Tenants 
refused to pay rents or taxes, alleging doubt as to 
who was the lawful Proprietary and under what 
government they lived. Sheriffs took with them 
armed posses to enforce the payment of public dues, 
and occasionally the aid of the militia was invoked. 
The natural results ensued ; — arrests, bloodshed and 
the burning of homesteads, reprisals, and all the 
incidents of border warfare. One of the sturdiest 
of the Maryland borderers was Thomas Cresap. 
He was a brave frontiersman and loyal tenant of 
Lord Baltimore. He built a blockhouse near the 
Susquehanna river, directly at the fortieth degree 
of north latitude, the limit claimed by Lord Balti- 
more for his northern boundary. It was an outpost 
of the Province. 

This stout fighter aroused the special animosity 
of the Pennsylvanians. They invaded his house 
at one time and threatened to hang him. Upon 



THE MARYLAND PALATINATE 151 

another occasion a large party surrounded it, set 
it on fire, and attacking the inmates as they fled 
from the flames, an affray followed in which one 
man was killed and several wounded, among the 
latter bemg Cresap, himself; and four persons, of 
whom he was one, were carried prisoners to Phila- 
delphia.^ The Pennsylvanians alleged that Cresap 
was seized for killing one of their men ; while 
in Maryland it was claimed that he shot only in 
self-defense when his house was attacked and his 
life threatened. Samuel Ogle,^ then Governor of 
Maryland, sought to obtain Cresap^s release; and 
failing in this, directed the seizure of a number 
of the ring-leaders in the raid ; which was accom- 
plished by a posse of Mary landers. And so the 
strife went on, with violence on both sides, until 
in 1 736 appeal was finally made to the Crown by 
the Maryland government, and an order in Council 
was issued commanding both sides to keep the 
peace, and that no further grants of lands should 
be made in the disputed territory until the location 
of the boundary should be fixed. 

'Md. Hist Soc, Coll. Calvert MSS., Docs. 320, 321. 

^The Governors of Maryland after the restoration of the 
Proprietary authority were : — John Hart, 1715 to 1720 ; 
Charles Calvert (cousin of Lord Baltimore), 1720 to 1727 ; 
Benedict Leonard Calvert (brother of Lord Baltimore), 1727 
to 1731 ; Samuel Ogle, 1731 to 1732 ; 1733 to 1742 ; 1747 to 
1752 ; Thomas Bladen, 1742 to 1747 ; Horatio Sharpe, 1753 
to 1769 ; and Kobert Eden (brother-in-law of Frederick, Lord 
Baltimore), 1769 to 1776. 



152 THE LORDS BALTIMORE AND 

On May 10, 1732, Charles, Lord Baltimore, 
entered into an agreement with John, Thomas and 
Richard Penn, sons of William Penn, as to the 
manner in which the boundary between Maryland 
and Pennsylvania should be determined.^ By 
this agreement, which was executed in England, 
he practically surrendered all for which, in the 
boundary dispute, his ancestors had contended, 
and conceded to the Penns all that they had 
sought. 

Nearly fifty years before, the Lords of Trade 
had directed that for determining the boundary 
of the three lower counties (or Delaware), a line 
should be run westward from Cape Henlopen to 
the middle of the peninsula lying between the Dela- 
ware and Chesapeake Bays, and thence northerly. 
The agreement purported to provide for just such a 
boundary; but material deviations were introduced. 
Attached to the agreement was a map, referred to 
and made a part of it, and admitted to be a true copy 
of those which had been sent over from America 
to the parties, by their respective agents in those 
parts, for their assistance and guidance. 

The agreement then proceeded to define the 
boundary, and provided that the east and west line 
(constituting the southern boundary of Delaware) 
should begin at the place in the said map called 
Cape Henlopen, which lies south of Cape Cornelius ; 

' Md. Hist. Soc, Coll Calvert 3ISS., Doc. 298, 



THE MARYLAND PALATINATE 153 

thence to run to the exact middle point of the 
peninsula ; thence northerly until it became tangent 
on the west to the periphery of a circle drawn at a 
distance of twelve miles from the town of Newcastle ; 
thence a line to be run due north until it comes 
into the same latitude as fifteen miles due south of 
the most southern part of the City of Philadelphia ; 
and thence due west ; this last course to constitute 
the boundary between Maryland and Pennsylvania. 

Of the map referred to, there are two printed 
copies in the possession of the Maryland Historical 
Society, and one, done in water colors, which is 
in all probability an original.^ 

Upon this map the cape at the mouth of the 
Delaware Bay, then, as now, well known as Cape 
Henlopen, is labeled Cape Cornelius, and about 
twenty miles down the coast on the Atlantic sea- 
board, a place which is appropriately known as 
False Cape, is falsely marked Cape Henlopen. 
From this map all such standards of measurement 
as lines of latitude and longitude, which might 
have arrested the attention of Lord Baltimore, were 
carefully omitted, but the lines proposed for the 
demarcation of the boundaries between Maryland 
on the one side, and the three lower counties (or 
Delaware) and Pennsylvania on the other, were 
distinctly drawn in red ink. These red lines, 

^ One of the printed copies has an endorsement showing that 
it was used as an exhibit in the examination of witnesses under 
commission at Philadelphia. 



154 THE LORDS BALTIMORE AND 

beginning on the east at the point ^' called on the 
map^' Cape Henlopen, and which are specially 
referred to in the agreement, are those which in 1732 
Lord Baltimore assented to as defining the bound- 
aries of Maryland. Sixty years earlier a map of 
Maryland had been prepared by Augustin Herman, 
whose services in the making of it had been accepted 
by Cecilius, Lord Baltimore, in payment for the 
grant to him of Bohemia Manor. Herman's map 
was engraved and published in London in 1673, by 
Faithorne, an engraver of high reputation. This map 
was well known, and its accuracy is remarkable. 
Modern surveys have made but small corrections 
upon the portions which relate to the coast, the 
bay, and the tidewater region. Upon this map the 
location of Cape Henlopen, then as now situated 
directly at the entrance to Delaware Bay, and the 
position of the Susquehanna Fort already mentioned 
as marking the northern boundary of Maryland at 
the fortieth degree of north latitude, were distinctly 
given. In addition to this many other maps of 
the Province had been printed and published.^ 

It is to be observed that by the terms of this 
agreement Lord Baltimore consented that the line 

^ For convenience of reference and comparison, there are 
printed with this volume, a facsimile of the map above 
described upon which Cape Henlopen is falsely marked, and 
also one of a portion of Herman's map, showing the eastern 
part of the Province. These maps are reproduced by per- 
mission of the Maryland Historical Society from its publication 
designated as Calvert Papers, No. 2. 



THE MARYLAND PALATINATE 155 

should be run, not from Cape Henlopen, as the 
Lords of Trade had directed, but from " the place 
on said map called Cape Henlopen which lies south 
of Cape Cornelius," thus admitting the existence of 
a cape known by the latter name. After the map 
had served its purpose, Cape Henlopen returned to 
its proper place, the same which it had previously, 
and has subsequently occupied, and the mythical 
"Cape Cornelius" vanished from the face of the 
earth, and from the maps thereof. 

The northern boundary of the Province of Mary- 
land was by the charter distinctly fixed at the 
fortieth degree of north latitude, which passes north 
of Philadelphia ; so that that city is situated within 
the territory originally granted to Cecilius, Lord 
Baltimore. The fortieth degree had all along been 
insisted upon, and the motive of the Penns in 
persistently refusing to unite in the determination 
of its location by astronomical observation is suffi- 
ciently plain. 

How Charles, Lord Baltimore, could have been 
so ignorant of the geography of his Province, or 
so misled as to the location of its boundaries, 
the position of such a well known point as Cape 
Henlopen, and of other conspicuous physical 
features, such as rivers '*and headlands that were 
misplaced upon the map, and hence to sign an 
agreement by which the southern boundaries of 
both Delaware and Pennsylvania were moved about 
twenty miles to the southward, thus reducing the 



156 THE LORDS BALTIMORE AND 

area of Maryland by a strip of that width along 
its entire northern border, is a mystery which 
cannot now be solved. His grandfather had been 
asked by the elder Penn to name a "gentleman's 
price'' for a concession much less in extent than 
the one which was now made without considera- 
tion to the younger Penns.^ 

In the agreement, the map attached to it was 
described as a true copy of those sent over from 
America to the parties to the agreement by their 
respective agents. That it, or one like it, was sent 
or approved by any agent of Lord Baltimore in 
Maryland is incredible. There was a Surveyor 
General of the Province ; the location of the fortieth 
degree of north latitude, the northern boundary as 
defined by the charter, had been ascertained and 
was well known ; while Cresap and others had settled 
along the northern frontier for the express purpose 
of maintaining possession in the name of the Pro- 

^ Maryland also lost a large tract of territory to Virginia, 
through ignorance of geographical features on the part of the 
first settlers. Maryland's western boundary was to be fixed at 
the first fountain of the Potomac, the southern boundary to 
follow the south bank of that river. The north fork was 
adopted as the boundary, but later it was ascertained that the 
south fork was the longer, and that therefore Maryland was 
entitled not only to a boundary further west, but also to all 
the fertile land lying between the two branches of the river. 
The questions in relation to this territory were not finally 
settled until 1852, when Maryland relinquished her claims 
in favor of Virginia. 



THE MARYLAND PALATINATE 157 

prietary of Maryland, and had been bravely fighting 
to that end. 

After the death of Charles, Lord Baltimore, his 
brother, Cecilius Calvert, was appointed Secretary 
of Maryland to reside in England and act for the 
heir, Frederick, during his minority. He wrote in 
1752 to Edmund Jennings, the Deputy Secretary 
resident in Maryland, that the map attached to 
the agreement had been prepared by the Penns, 
and that the late Lord Baltimore had been 
greatly deceived and imposed upon therein.^ It 
is certainly inconceivable that he should have 
knowingly accepted a map so palpably inaccurate, 
and the adoption of which was so prejudicial to 
his own interests. 

Within less than a year after signing the agree- 
ment with the Penns, Lord Baltimore visited 
Maryland for the purpose of adjusting various 
questions affecting the Province. He was reason- 
ably successful in composing for the time the dis- 
putes that had arisen between the upper and 
lower houses of the Assembly, and it was not 
long before he discovered, or had pointed out to 
him, the blunder that he had made in signing the 
agreement with the Penns. When he recognized 
how great a sacrifice of territory he had assented to, 
Lord Baltimore refused to carry out the terms of 
the agreement, and in 1735 the Penns instituted 

^Md. Hist. Soc, Calvert Papers, No. 2, p. 135. 



158 THE LOBDS BALTIMORE AND 

proceedings against him to compel performance on 
his part ; but the case dragged along. By reason of 
the death of one of the Penns, and the delays inci- 
dent to chancery proceedings, a final decision was not 
reached until 1750. It was at last rendered by Lord 
Chancellor Hardwicke, by whom the contention of 
the Penns was sustained in every particular. The 
reasoning of the decision was in substance that Lord 
Baltimore, having entered into an agreement for the 
purpose of settling a disputed question would have 
to abide by its terms ; that he was presumed to 
know the bounds of his Province ; and as to the 
fraudulent location of Cape Henlopen on the map, 
the Chancellor calmly ignored all evidence, and 
decided that for the purposes of this case, it must 
be deemed and taken to be where the parties to 
the agreement had said it was. The decree pro- 
vided that commissioners should be appointed and 
the boundary surveyed.^ 

Upon the death of Charles, Lord Baltimore, on 
April 24, 1751, shortly after this decision was 
rendered, the title and estates devolved upon his 
son Frederick, who was then a minor. 

The minority of Frederick prevented further 
action for the time, and more than ten years 
elapsed before measures were taken for the actual 
determination of the boundary as prescribed. Then 
two distinguished astronomers and mathematicians, 

^Md. Hist Soc, Coll. Calvert MSS., Docs. 444, 446. 



1:HE MABYLANi) PALATINATE 159 

Charles Mason and Jeremiah Dixon, of England, 
were engaged to survey and mark the boundary. 
They began the survey in 1763, and continued 
their work until 1767, when, as they proceeded 
westward, they were stopped by the activity of 
hostile Indians. In the meantime, they had com- 
pleted the location of the line on the peninsula, 
and projected the east and west line, which marked 
the northern boundary of Maryland, two hundred 
and forty-four miles west from the Delaware. As 
directed by the decree in chancery, this line was 
substantially marked by hewn stones, set up at 
every mile, and at the end of every fifth mile 
larger stones were placed having sculptured on the 
one side the arms of Lord Baltimore, and on the 
other the arms of the Penns ; ^ except that in steep 
places and on mountain sides, mounds of stone 
were substituted. Many of these boundary stones 
are still in position, and the trees having been 
felled for a broad strip, — right and left of the 
line, — the location of the boundary is to-day still 
further indicated through the western and forest 
portions, by the colors of the foliage upon the 
younger growth of timber that has come up, con- 
trasting with that of the primeval forest by which 
it is bordered. 

Such was the origin of Mason and Dixon^s 
line — run nearly a century and a half ago to 

^ One of these stones, which had been thrown down, is now 
preserved at the rooms of the Maryland Historical Society. 



160 THE LORDS BALTIMORE AND 

settle a dispute then nearly a century old, between 
two proprietaries whose respective domains were 
destined to pass forever from their control in 
less than a decade from the completion of the 
survey; — a line Avhich a century after its estab- 
lishment became famous, and its name familiar 
throughout the land, as the assumed boundary 
between the States in which African slavery was 
lawful, and those in which it was prohibited. 

During the lifetime of Charles, Lord Baltimore, 
the requisitions of the Crown upon the American 
colonies for troops and money were frequent, and 
the lower house of the Assembly in Maryland 
persisted in finding means for withholding the 
supplies, by coupling to the appropriation bills con- 
ditions which the upper house would not accept. 
They were generally framed so that the duties 
levied for the use of the Proprietary should be 
reduced by an amount sufficient to offset the levy 
made for the Crown. There was also manifested 
an indisposition to furnish men to fight the French 
and Indians on the Canadian frontier, the brunt 
of whose attacks fell upon the New England 
colonies, when hostilities nearer home might at 
any time be apprehended. 

The people of Maryland were not, however, 
altogether unmindful of the royal mandates. It 
was during this period that what has since become 
known as the imperial policy of England first 
began to take shape, and a call was made upon 



THE MARYLAND PALATINATE l61 

her AmericaD colonies for troops to serve in foreign 
war beyond the limits of the North American 
continent. Troops were demanded for service in 
the tropics in the war with Spain. In 1740 
Maryland furnished three companies of infantry 
for this purpose, which were sent to the siege of 
Cartagena, a city and port in what is now the 
Republic of Colombia, close to the Isthmus of 
Panama. The sad, the pitiful, story of that cam- 
paign, in which the tropical fevers and the imbe- 
cility and jealousies of rival commanders combined 
to waste brave lives, is apart from our subject. 
The survivors from that expedition were few in 
number. 

On one occasion when troops from Maryland 
had been sent to Albany, the Maryland Assembly 
emphatically refused to vote an appropriation to 
provide for their maintenance, claiming that having 
furnished the men, equipped them, and provided 
for their transportation, they had done all that 
could be required of them. The troops, they con- 
tended, were in the service of the Crown, and the 
royal government would have to provide for them. 
This illustrates the temper which was developing, 
and which in later years found expression in more 
pronounced resistance to the demands of the Crown, 
as these came to be more keenly felt as encroach- 
ments upon the rights of the colonies, while the 
colonies became stronger either to help or to defy. 

Frederick the sixth and last Lord Baltimore was 
11 



162 THE LORDS BALTIMORE AND 

born February 6, 1731/2. His guardians, during 
the brief period of his minority which remained after 
his succession to the title, were John Sharpe, Esq., a 
barrister, and the Right Honorable Arthur Onslow, 
speaker of the House of Commons. 

History records little, if anything, concerning 
Frederick, that is to his credit. He travelled 
extensively upon the continent of Europe and 
also visited Constantinople and the Orient. He 
was infinitely conceited, and, — ambitious of being 
esteemed a man of letters, — he wrote a ridiculous 
book of travels, and several still more ridiculous 
volumes of verses. The book of travels was 
reviewed in the Gentleman's Magazine for 1767. 
The reviewer made merry with his subject and after 
quoting a number of absurd and ungrammatical 
passages, closed his criticism with the observation 
that "it is to be regretted that in this book there 
is not one event, description or remark worth 
recording.^' Frederick also apparently essayed 
science; for we learn from the correspondence 
between him and his uncle, Cecilius Calvert, that 
in 1764 he wrote for his globes and telescopes to 
be shipped to him at Smyrna.^ 

His travels on the continent happened to be 
coincident in date with those of Laurence Sterne, 
who found in Lord Baltimore subject for comment in 
" A Sentimental Journey.'^ Sentiment formed no part 

^Md. Hist. Soc, Calvert Papers, No. 2, p. 217. 



THE MARYLAND PALATINATE 163 

of Frederick's composition, and he is thus char- 
acterized by Sterne : — ^^ Mundungus/' he says, — 
(that being a name for one of the lowest grades of 
Maryland's staple product, tobacco, which Sterne 
adopted as a designation for his Lordship,) — " Mun- 
dungus, with an immense fortune, made the whole 
tour, going from Rome to Naples, from ^Naples 
to Venice, from Venice to Vienna, to Dresden, to 
Berlin — without one generous connection, or pleasur- 
able anecdote to tell of; but he had travelled 
straight on, looking neither to his right hand nor 
his left, less Love or Pity should seduce him out 
of his road. . . . Peace be to him if it is to be 
found, but were the happiest mansion in Heaven 
to be allotted, he would be so far from being happy, 
that his soul would do penance there for all eter- 
nity."^ Such is the sketch drawn of him by a 
contemporary who was not lacking in powers of 
observation, discrimination and description. 

Frederick was married in 1753 to Lady Diana 
Egerton, daughter of the Duke of Bridgewater. 
There are among the Calvert Papers now in the 
possession of the Maryland Historical Society a 
number of letters which passed between her and 
Frederick, both before and after marriage.^ In this 
correspondence her Ladyship appears to much the 
greater advantage, not only in form and manner of 
expression, but also in handwriting and spelling. 

^Sterne : A Sentimental Journey ; In the Street, — Calais. 
^Md. Bist. Soc, Coll. Calvert MSS., Docs. 1153 et seq. 



164 THE LORDS BALTIMORE AND 

His epistles are slovenly productions, full of blots, 
alterations and erasures. The affection which he 
effusively expressed was not of long duration. 
They were separated by agreement, in May, 1756, 
the cause assigned being what is now loiown as 
" incompatibility of temper.^' Lady Baltimore died 
in August, 1758, having for some time been an 
invalid from a disorder in her back, resulting, it 
is said, from being thrown from a carriage while 
driving, — taking an airing, the account has it, — 
with her husband.^ 

It is pleasant to note that at the time of her 
death, her step-father. Sir Eichard Lyttleton, who 
had married the Dowager Duchess of Bridgewater, 
wrote to Lord Baltimore, testifying to the affec- 
tion of Lady Baltimore for him, which had been 
particularly shown throughout her final illness.^ 
It was after the death of Lady Baltimore that 
Frederick made the tour of the continent of Europe 
and the Levant, during which he aroused the scorn 
of the author of " A Sentimental Journey." 

During the war with France, Maryland gave 
but little assistance to the Crown or the sister 
colonies in the conduct of the campaign. This 
was due, partly, to the fact that the territory of 
Maryland being strictly limited to a definite area, 

^Scharfs History of Maryland, Vol. u, p. 137. Md. Hist. 
Soc, Coll. Calvert MSS., Doc. 1207. (Letter of Earl of Essex, 
August 25,1758.) 

2 Jfd Hist. Soc, Coll. Calvert MSS., Doc. 1203. 



THE MARYLAND PALATINATE 165 

there was nothing to be gamed for the Province, 
by pushing the frontier of the English possessions 
westward beyond the Ohio and to the French 
settlements on the Mississippi; but chiefly, to the 
constant disagreements between the upper and 
lower houses of Assembly and the disaffection of 
the latter to the Proprietary. When Colonel George 
Washington was despatched from Virginia in 1753 
to march upon the French at Fort DuQuesne, the 
Maryland Assembly in spite of the urgent appeals 
of Horatio Sharpe, the Governor, refused to con- 
tribute either troops or money. Later, when bills 
were passed by the lower house for raising money 
for defence, they were coupled with conditions 
which it was known the upper house would have 
to reject, such as the appropriation of the money 
paid for licenses of ordinaries (which was one of 
the Proprietary's personal sources of revenue), the 
levying of taxes on vacant lands, — which w^ould 
result in a direct tax on the Proprietary's unpro- 
ductive property, — and a double tax on Roman 
Catholics. Measure after measure of this nature 
was passed by the lower house and rejected by 
the upper. Finally, after Braddock's defeat, and 
with the western part of the Province in a state 
of terror from the raids and murders committed 
by the Indian allies of the French, Governor 
Sharpe consented to an act appropriating money 
for fortifications, and for rangers to be maintained 
on the western frontier, in which the objectionable 



166 THE LORDS BALTIMORE AND 

provisions in respect to the levying of a tax on 
the Proprietary's manor lands, and the appropria- 
tion of the money from licenses were contained. 
The exigencies of the occasion were certainly such 
as to justify a voluntary concession and contribu- 
tion to the defence of the Province on the part of 
Frederick, Lord Baltimore ; but he was not so 
minded. His father had assented to the appro- 
priation of the revenue from licenses of ordinaries 
for military expenses in 1740, upon the occasion 
of the expedition against Cartagena ; and again, 
in 1746, for the expedition against Canada; but 
Governor Sharpe's action in consenting to a con- 
tinuance of this appropriation under circumstances 
infinitely more urgent, excited Frederick's wrath. 
Governor Sharpe explained and defended his action 
in a long letter^ to his brother, John Sharpe, of 
London, who had been Lord Baltimore's guardian 
and was then his counsel. 

A century before, Cecilius, Lord Baltimore, had 
expended a fortune in the planting of Maryland, 
from which he himself receive no corresponding 
returns whatever. His descendant,^ Frederick, it 
was admitted, enjoyed from this heritage at the 
time of his marriage in 1753, a yearly revenue 
of £9,500,2 ^^^ ^^ ^l^g ^-j^g q£ j^ig ^^^^^ -j^ -^^^i^ 

the amount had increased to £12,000. He was, 

'^Archives of Maryland: Correspondence of Governor Sharpe, 
Vol. I, p. 424. 

^Md. Hist. Soc, Coll. Calvert 3ISS., X>oc. 953. 



THE MARYLAND PALATINATE 167 

however, selfish and extravagant, cared nothmg 
for Maryland except as a source of revenue, and 
nothmg would he concede, either to relieve the 
burdens of his tenants, or to defend his own 
interests. 
^ He never visited Maryland, though he travelled 
widely elsewhere ; and his correspondence with 
Governor Sharpe related to but few themes. He 
constantly urged that the collection of rents be 
pushed, and manifested a suspicion that he was 
not getting all that was due to him, or that had 
been collected by his agents. At the same time 
he made frequent demands for the appointment 
of kinsmen and favorites to lucrative offices, and 
curiously enough, for benefices for clergymen 
whom he sent out; and his acquaintance seems 
to have included some of the most disreputable 
members of that profession, reverend gentlemen 
whose departure from England was apparently 
the one thing that was in that country urgently 
required of them. Frederick's dispensation of 
church livings did not tend materially to promote 
the cause of religion, or to increase, through its 
representatives, respect for the Church of England. 
It is not impossible that in the sale of church 
livings this thrifty spendthrift discovered a new 
source of revenue. 

In 1768, Frederick was tried at the Kingston 
Assizes for an infamous crime, his accuser being 
a young London milliner. He was acquitted, not, 



168 THE LORDS BALTIMORE AND 

however, as Mr. Fiske says/ upon a technicality, 
but because the evidence, however damaging, was 
in some respects inconsistent, and under the strict 
rules of evidence applicable in criminal cases, and 
with rather lenient instructions from the court, the 
jury found it not sufficiently conclusive to sustain 
a conviction of felony. It is to be observed that 
the trial was held in the County of Surrey, where 
Lord Baltimore had large landed estates and there- 
fore a numerous tenantry, and that an acceptable 
jury was not obtained until after his right of 
challenge had been very freely exercised.^ Though 
acquitted in court, he was convicted at the bar of 
public opinion ; and the testimony elicited at the 
trial would have been quite sufficient to destroy 
his reputation, if he had had any to lose. The 
news of the charge against him, and of the trial, 
extinguished in the Maryland Province whatever 
vestige of regard or loyalty remained for the Pro- 
prietary, whom the people had never seen, and 
whose exactions had been long resented. 
Y His death occurred in Naples, September 14, 
1771. A contemporary account of his funeral 
says ^' the remains of the late Lord Frederick 
Baltimore, who died abroad, were carried from 
Exeter Exchange in the Strand, where they had 
lain in state, in order to be interred in the family 
vault at Epsom. His Lordship had injured his 

^ Fiske, Old Virginia and her Neighbors, Vol. ir, p. 172. 
^Gentleman's Magazine, Vol. xxxviii, pp. 142, 180, 



THE MARYLAND PALATINATE 169 

character in his life, by seduction, so that the 
populace paid no regard to his memory when 
dead, but plundered the room where the body 
lay the moment it was removed." ^ 

Frederick, Lord Baltimore, left no legitimate 
offspring ; and in anticipation of this event, he had 
been assiduous in his efforts to break the entail 
created by his father's will. Under that instru- 
ment, upon the death of Frederick without heir, 
the title of Baron of Baltimore being then extinct, 
the Proprietorship of Maryland w^as to pass to 
Frederick's eldest sister, the Honorable Louisa 
Browning, Avife of John Browning, Esq. In his 
efforts to defeat this reversion, Frederick devised 
the Province to his natural son, Henry Harford, 
whom he described in his will as "a certain youth 
called or known by the name of Henry Harford, 
the son of Hester Wheland, of the Kingdom of 
Ireland, born in Bond Street, and now of the 
age of nine years or more.'' ^ 

Proceedings in chancery were instituted against 
the executors of Frederick's will, in order to assert 
the rights of Mrs. Browning under the will of 
her father; and the executors thereupon, — one of 
whom, Robert Eden, the husband of Caroline, 
Frederick's younger sister, had succeeded Horatio 
Sharpe as Governor of Maryland, — immediately 
caused the young Henry Harford to be proclaimed 

^Gentleman's Magazine, Vol. xlii, p. 44. 
^Sdiarf s History of Maryland, Vol. ii, p. 137. 



170 THE LORDS BALTIMORE AND 

as Proprietary, and secured his recognition by the 
Assembly of Maryland. 

But it was not for long. The history of the 
remaining years of the colonial period is filled 
with the story of the various attempts of the 
British Government to exact revenue from the 
colonies, the stamp act, the duty on tea, and the 
resolute attitude of the colonies in resistance of 
those attempts ; not least in the spirit of determi- 
nation, though perhaps the least proclaimed, are to 
be noted the actions in Maryland — the proceedings 
of the courts without stamped paper, when stamped 
paper was by act of Parliament required, and the 
burning at Annapolis in open daylight, without 
attempt at disguise on the part of the actors, of 
the brig Peggy Stewart with her cargo of tea. 
But these events belong to the history of the 
revolutionary, rather than of the colonial period. 

Estranged from the proprietary government, and 
now aroused to resistance to royal authority by 
the encroachments and exactions of Parliament, 
Maryland was ready to take part, — a distinguished 
and gallant part it proved, — in the American 
Ke volution. The proprietary Governor, Eden, 
withdrew from the Province, peaceably, and per- 
sonally esteemed ; and the formation of an inde- 
pendent state began. 

Eventually, the case of Mrs. Browning against 
the executors of the will of Frederick came on for 
a hearing before the High Court of Chancery ; but 



THE MARYLAND PALATINATE 171 

in the meanwhile the United States of America had 
declared themselves independent; and the Lord 
Chancellor declined to go on with the hearing, 
on the ground that it would be only a waste of 
time, as let the Province belong to which it 
would, he had no power to give the rightful 
owner possession. 

We have briefly reviewed during the past four 
weeks the characters and careers of the six Barons 
of Baltimore. 
S/ In George, the first Baron, was recognized a man 
of wisdom, character, and indomitable industry, who, 
from a comparatively modest station, arose to one 
of prominence and influence, and boldly projected 
the foundation of a new colony in the new world. 

Cecilius, the second Baron, evinced a broad- 
minded liberality and statesmanlike ability ; and 
therewith, infinite patience and tact, besides un- 
failing courage, amidst constant difficulties and 
discouragements. His character was such as to 
command admiration. 

Charles, third Baron, sought to walk in his 
father's footsteps, but fell very far short of him 
in ability and liberality of mind. He also was 
beset with difficulties, but he was less skillful 
than his father m meeting and overcoming them. 

Of Benedict Leonard, fourth Baron, we know 
little except that his change of religious faith 
resulted in the restoration of dominion over the 
Province to his son. 



172 THE LORDS BALTIMORE AND 

Charles, fifth Baron, was characterized by weak- 
ness and vanity, manifested alike, in his career as 
a conrtier, his relations with the Province, and his 
dealings in connection with the boundary disputes. 

Of Frederick, sixth and last Baron, a selfish, dis- 
reputable and dissolute degenerate, neither ability 
nor character was even respectable. 

It is to be observed with respect to the six 
Calverts who successively held the title of Baron 
of Baltimore, as it was transmitted from father to 
son, that the first three appear, so far as records 
can indicate, to have been happy in their domestic 
lives ; while the last three were each of them 
either separated from their wives, or divorced. 

It is perhaps noteworthy, that the earlier Barons, 
sprung from the country gentry, or perhaps the 
sturdy yeomanry, were distinguished both for ability 
and elevation of character. The distinct degen- 
eration of the line, whether resulting therefrom, 
or merely coincident therewith, is to be recognized 
from the time of the infusion of the royal blood 
of the Stuarts, derived through the granddaughter 
of Barbara Palmer, Duchess of Cleveland and 
mistress of Charles II. 

"Xe sang le plus vieie^ le plus epuise, le plus 
pauvre . . .,'' these are the significant words used 
by Daudet in Les Rois en Exil, to describe the 
physical condition of a young prince, the last of 
a royal line. The student of vital statistics would 
note one fact which is to be gathered from the 



THE MARYLAND PALATINATE 173 

dates of the birth and death of the several Lords 
Baltimore. The duration of the lives of the first 
three Barons was fifty-two, sixty-nine and eighty- 
five years, respectively, an average of nearly 
sixty-nine, — almost the three score years and ten 
allotted to man. The ages at death of the last 
three were thirty-seven, fifty-two and thirty-nine, — 
an average of forty-three years. The degeneracy 
was apparently physical, as well as moral and 
mental. 



LECTURE yi. 

Mannees and Customs, Social and Economic 

Conditions in Maryland During the 

Colonial Period. 

WHEN in March, 1634, the first colonists 
of Maryland, in the Ark and the 
Dove, ascended the Potomac River, and made 
their landing at Heron Island, upon which the 
name of St. Clement's was bestowed, they were 
about to make the first permanent settlement of 
Anglo-Saxons within what are now the borders 
of Maryland. Traders from Virginia had visited 
the region before, and a trading post had been 
established at Kent Island in the Chesapeake ; 
but of permanent settlements or plantations there 
appear to have been none. The cession of a site 
for a town upon the mainland having been obtained 
from the Indians, who yielded some of their own 
houses for the occupancy of the colonists, there 
were then laid out and established the limits of 
a town,^ upon which was bestowed the name of 
St. Mary's, a city now faded from the map, but 
which was for sixty years the seat of government 
of the Province. 

^Md. Hist. Soc, Calvert Papers, No. 3, p. 41. 
174 



THE MABYLAND PALATINATE 175 

These first settlers had the primeval forest with 
which to deal, wherein, as w^e learn from Father 
White's Relation of the Voyage to Maryland, " all 
was high woods except where the Indians had 
cleared for corne.^' ^ Of roads there were none, 
though, as the same narrator tells, along by the 
borders of the river (and his knowledge at the time 
of writing extended no farther) "the woode was 
not choaked up with undershrubs, but commonly 
so farre distant from each other as a coach and 
fower horses may travale without molestation." 
But for a long time, in fact for nearly a century, 
the need for roads as a means of communication 
and transportation was not felt : the settlements, 
the plantations, were established along the bay 
shores, or upon the banks of the numerous rivers 
tributary thereto, and communication from one 
end of the settled portion of the Province to the 
other was swift and easy by means of the barges, 
pinnaces, skiffs and canoes, — forerunners of the 
pungies, bugeyes and skipjacks of to-day, — which 
sped from landing to landing, and from shore to 
shore. The colony was like a new world Venice, 
laid out upon a magnificent scale as to distance, 
though wholly lacking in the other forms of mag- 
nificence, and beauty of architecture, by which 
the old world Republic was distinguished. 

The conditions of life were naturally, or rather 
necessarily, those of a colony in the wilderness. 

^Ibid., p. 45. 



176 THE LORDS BALTIMORE AND 

The earlier habitations were rude structures of logs 
and boards. It was not until nearly a century 
had elapsed from the foundation of the colony 
that manor houses of fine proportions and with 
distinct beauty of design, — in a style of architec- 
ture which, from the period of the erection of these 
mansions, has come to be known in this country 
as ^^ Colonial/' — began to find place. Meanwhile, 
though the settlers had nature to struggle with, they 
found it nature in a kindly and responsive mood. 
The land was fertile, while the woods abounded 
with game, and the water with fish, ready to the 
hand of the huntsman or the fisherman. The 
woods were filled with deer, and other, smaller, 
animals fit for food, — while beavers, otters, musk- 
rats and wild cats, of which the fur was greatly 
valued, were plentiful. Bears and wolves appear 
also to have been near neighbors, though not highly 
esteemed as such. On the bay were swan, geese 
and ducks innumerable ; the latter we are told 
by an enthusiastic writer, in "millionous multi- 
tudes,' ' — an alliterative expression which does not 
seem like an exaggeration to any one who has 
seen the myriads of wild ducks which but a few 
years ago swarmed in the Chesapeake and the 
neighboring rivers, even after the construction of 
telegraph lines across British North America had 
led to the invasion of the breeding haunts of the 
ducks, and in spite of the frequent whistle of the 
many steamboats plying the waters of the bay, 



THE MARYLAND PALA.TINATE 177 

and the multiplication of shooting clubs upon every 
available point, which contributed to make the 
wild fowl, during their annual winter flight to the 
south, yet wilder and more rare. 

The industry of the colony was from an early 
date applied to the cultivation of tobacco ; a product 
which became the staple, the source of wealth, the 
measure of value, the medium of exchange, and 
ultimately, the bane of the Province. The lower 
or river portion of the colony, and the regions 
bordering upon the waters of the bay on both the 
eastern and western shores soon became devoted 
to tobacco culture. At first, as it began to take 
its place in commerce as an actual agricultural 
product of the soil, succeeding to the traffic in pelts 
and furs which were the first articles of export 
from the colony, the raising of tobacco proved a 
profitable venture ; but the natural result, of over- 
production and consequent deterioration in quality, 
soon followed. It was required by law, that all 
planters should raise a certain amount of corn, 
according to the numbers in their households ; but 
legal requirements upon this subject were of no 
avail. Tobacco, for lack of a better currency, came 
to be used as the medium of exchange in the 
Province. Values were expressed at so many 
pounds of tobacco ; taxes were lervied and paid 
in tobacco; fines were made payable in the same 
manner, as were also the fees for the support 
of the public officers of the Province. Except 
12 



178 THE LORDS BALTIMORE AND 

for a small amount of coins, of various nation- 
alities, and generally more or less debased by 
clipping, tobacco formed the standard currency 
of the Province. The inconvenience resulting 
from a lack of current money was strongly felt. 
At one time Cecilius, Lord Baltimore, attempted 
to supply this lack by the issue of a coinage of 
his own, exercising therein the right of coining 
money or establishing a mint, which he claimed 
under his charter as the prerogative of a Count 
Palatine possessing all the powers that had ever 
been held or exercised by any Bishop of Durham. 

Lord Baltimore sent samples of the coins, a 
shilling piece, a sixpence and a groat, to the 
Governor (Josias Fendall) and Council, with a 
letter dated September 29, 1659, in which he 
recommended that this money be made current 
by proclamation, for payments upon contracts or 
causes arising after a certain date to be specified; 
and that an Act of the Assembly be procured pro- 
viding for the punishment of counterfeiters of the 
coins. He also asked the advice of the Council 
concerning the use of the coin, and the encour- 
agement given to it. 

With characteristic fairness, Cecilius wrote a 
few days later, October 12, 1659, to his brother, 
Philip Calvert, who was Secretary of the Province, 
informing him that the samples of coins had been 
forwarded, and explaining that he had taken this 
course because he had been assured that the coins 



THE MARYLAND PALATINATE 179 

would be acceptable. But he added, that though 
the adoption of this currency would in his judgment 
be a very great advantage to the colony, yet it 
must not be imposed upon the people but by a 
law there made, by their consent, in a General 
Assembly. And he asked that this letter be shown 
to the Governor and Council.^ But little of this 
coinage seems to have been issued, and specimens 
of it even are rare. There are a few pieces pre- 
served in the collection of the Maryland Historical 
Society. These coins were struck in England, 
where question was promptly raised as to Lord 
Baltimore's authority to coin and export money. 
But the matter does not seem to have been pressed. 
In 1661 the Assembly of Maryland passed an Act 
praying the Lord Proprietary to set up a mint in the 
Province and providing for the acceptance of the coin 
and the punishment of counterfeiting and clipping. 
It was not until 1733 that an issue of paper 
currency was made. The amount was £90,000. It 
is interesting to note that in this period of general 
ignorance upon financial questions, more than ade- 
quate provision was made for the redemption of 
this currency, and, though it was at times depressed 
in exchange value, its ultimate redemption, with a 
surplus left in the sinking fund of £35,000, placed 
the financial credit of Maryland pre-eminent among 
the American colonies.^ 

' Proceedings of the Council, 1636-1667, pp. 383-385. 
^ Sharpens Correspondence, Vol. iii, p. 251. 



180 THE LORDS BALTIMORE AND 

But the old craze^ old as well as new, in respect 
to the issue of paper money, and the increase of 
currency, was as malignant a disease two hundred 
years ago as it has lately proved to be. The theory 
of this economic heresy was the same then as 
now. Tobacco served as currency, and therefore 
as money. Currency, it was believed, represented 
Avealth ; therefore the more tobacco the more wealth. 
That the quality of the currency, or its quantity 
and value, as measured against the commodities or 
ventures against which it was to be exchanged, had 
anything to do with the matter, was no better 
appreciated then, by the planters of Maryland, than 
it has been in some modern schools of financial 
and economic science, falsely so called. 

The effect, the result, was natural. Every one 
rushed to planting tobacco. Complaint was made 
that artisans who had come to the Province, instead 
of ^^ practising their mysteries,'' had devoted them- 
selves to tobacco planting, and hence articles which 
were produced by handicraft, — notably the useful 
and indispensable item of leather,^ that is, cured 
and dressed hides, had become scarce and costly ; — 
and meanwhile the price of Maryland tobacco, as 
a result both of over-production and deterioration 
in quality, steadily declined. 

Eepeated efforts were made to restrict the pro- 

1 Proceedings of the Council, 1667-1687/ 8, p. 457. 



THE MARYLAND PALATINATE 181 

duction and impose a standard of quality to be 
determined by official inspection, as was the case 
in Virginia. But several difficulties stood in the 
way. With the exception of St. Mary's, the seat 
of government, which was a city in name only, 
there were no cities, and no marts of trade. Ports 
of entry there were, but they were mere landings 
or places for the lading of vessels. Some of the 
old landings, still so designated, have, through the 
gradual filling up of the river channels, been now 
left far from navigable water. 

There were no warehouses in which tobacco 
sufficient for a cargo could be accumulated, and 
consequently the shipments of tobacco were most 
easily and most cheaply made by rich planters, 
who had estates bordering upon navigable waters 
with landing places of their own. Planters seated 
back from the water had to have their products 
conveyed to places of shipment, and this was 
ordinarily done by the simple process of inserting 
a pole, as an axle, through the tobacco hogshead, 
which, serving itself as a roller, was tediously 
hauled in this manner by oxen to the nearest 
landing. Hence the name of "rolling roads,'' — once 
familiar in Maryland as a designation of the roads 
over which this primitive system of transporta- 
tion was conducted, but now being fast superseded 
by titles which indicate an utter indifference to 
historical association. Not far from this city, a 



182 THE LORDS BALTIMORE AND 

highway across a portion of Baltimore County, 
and terminating at Elkridge Landing, which from 
its ancient use was for two centuries known as the 
Rolling Road, has lately, in accordance with 
modern fashion, been renamed with the more 
pretentious title of Catonsville Avenue. By such 
processes, old things pass away and all things are 
made new. 

The abundance of unoccupied or vacant land 
in Maryland, and its cheapness, led to a thriftless 
mode of cultivation, the effects of which have 
left their mark to this day upon the lower or 
river counties of the State. As land became 
exhausted, fields which had ceased to be profitable 
were merely abandoned and fresh land brought 
under cultivation. 

The earlier attempts to restore the value of the 
staple took shape only in efforts to limit production. 
But this was recognized as useless without the 
co-operation of Virginia, where the crop ripened 
earlier, and conditions acceptable to both colonies 
were difficult to arrange. The plan was moreover 
bitterly opposed by the lower house of Assembly 
for the reason that it would impose a hardship 
on the smaller planters who could not forego their 
sole means of livelihood, reduced as it was in 
value. And when an Act was eventually passed 
upon the insistence of the upper house, forbidding 
tobacco planting for a year. Lord Baltimore him- 
self (it was Charles, third Baron) disallowed the 



THE MARYLAND PALATINATE 183 

Act upon the very ground that had been urged by 
the delegates, — that it would impose an excessive 
hardship upon the smaller landholders.^ Mean- 
while the merchants began to complain of the 
lack of shipping facilities, the detention of their 
ships while the cargoes were gotten together by 
the slow process of rolling, and the exhausting 
labor imposed on the sailors, who were required 
to help in the process. 

Another and serious difficulty attending every 
effort to secure the raising of the standard of 
tobacco was the fact that the fees of public officers, 
and later, the tax for the support of the clergy 
of the Church of England, were payable in tobacco. 
The Assembly, to avoid a gratuitous increase in 
the compensation of these gentlemen and officials, 
not unnaturally insisted that if the quality, and 
consequently the money value, of tobacco were 
raised, there should be a corresponding reduction 
in the amounts to be paid for fees and taxes. This 
was strenuously opposed by those whose incomes 
would be afffected, and it was not until 1747 that, 
a compromise having been affected, a law was 
passed fixing the standard of tobacco, providing 
for official inspection, and imposing heavy penalties 
for false packing, and the mixing of trash leaves 
among the finer grades.^ The result was a prompt 

^Md. Archives; Proc. of Council, 1667-1687/8, pp. 5-9, 15-20. 
*Mereness ; Maryland as a Proprietary Province, p. 117. 
Maryland Gazette, July 14, 1747. 



184 THE LORDS BALTIMORE AND 

advance of fifty per cent, in the price of Maryland 
tobacco. 

Among the institutions which obtained in Mary- 
land during the earlier colonial period, there was 
one that is worthy of note on account of its 
direct relation with a very ancient form of com- 
munal or political organization : — perhaps one of 
the earliest Anglo-Saxon institutions of which we 
have knowledge. 

By the terms of the charter the Lord Proprietary 
and his heirs were empowered to constitute courts, 
appoint judges and do all things necessary for the 
administration of justice and preservation of the 
peace, and they were also specially authorized to 
erect any parcels of land into manors, and therein 
to hold a court baron ; and to have and keep 
view of frank pledge for the conservation of the 
peace and better government of the colony. 

The judicial system of the Province was gradu- 
ally developed, beginning with the Provincial Court, 
and eventually, as counties were successively erected, 
county courts were established. But the peculiarly 
interesting feature in the evolution of institutions 
is the manorial court or court baron. Under the 
conditions of plantation prescribed by Cecilius, any 
settler who should take up as much as 2000 acres 
of land with an adequate number of tenants 
or servants, was entitled to rank as lord of a 
manor, with all the rights belonging to that rank, 
chief among which was the privilege of having 



THE MARYLAND PALATINATE 185 

matters of dispute arising within the precincts of the 
manor decided by the manorial court or court baron. 
According to Blackstone, manors, with the appur- 
tenant authority to hokl a domestic court called a 
court baron for settling disputes, and redressing mis- 
demeanors and nuisances within the manor, are 
as ancient as the Saxon constitution. Closely 
connected with the courts baron in ancient insti- 
tutions, but still more ancient, was the court leet. 
This latter was composed of the assembly of the 
whole community, the residents of the district, 
and was not limited to the tenants of the 
manor. The principal matters dealt with were the 
view of frank pledge, that is, the production and 
inspection of sureties given for keeping the peace, 
and the presentment and punishment of offences. 
This court came eventually to be styled merely 
the view of frank pledge,^ as expressed in the 
Maryland charter. 

' The jurisdiction of the court baron, the court of the 
landlord, extended only to tenants of the manor. The 
court leet was the popular court, the court of the people. 
Cf . the German Leute. The rather meaningless name ' ' view 
of frank pledge ' ' by which the court came eventually to be 
known, is supposed to be due to an error in translation by the 
Norman lawyers when struggling with the names of Saxon 
institutions. It is presumed that they confounded the Saxon 
words for ''peace" and ''free," corresponding to the German 
Friede and /re i, and hence mistranslated "peace pledge" as 
"free," or "frank pledge." Blackstone, Commentaries, Bk. 
II, p. 90 ; Bk. Ill, p. 33, et seq. Digby, History of the Law of 
Heal Property, p. 54, note. 



186 t:se lords Baltimore and 

The advantage to an agricultural people of the 
manorial courts, where disputes could be settled 
promptly and on the spot, without the expense of 
going from home, is obvious. The records of some 
of these courts in Maryland have been preserved, 
so that we have a clear view of the working of 
this ancient Saxon institution in the new world. 
The court was organized with all due formality, 
with constable, a jury composed of freeholders and 
leaseholders, officers, and the steward of the manor 
presiding. 

It is recorded that at a court baron held March 7, 
1656, at St. GabriePs Manor, by the steward of 
the lady of the manor (Mistress Mary Brent), one 
Martin Kirke took of the lady of the manor, in 
full court, by delivery of the steward by the rod, 
according to the custom of the manor, a certain 
tenement. This delivery of possession by the rod, — 
a ceremony in which the steward holding one end, 
and the tenant the other, the relation of landlord 
and tenant was established in the presence of wit- 
nesses, and the rod being then broken, the steward 
and tenant each retained, as evidence of the trans- 
action, a piece of the rod, — is very ancient, long 
antedating a general knowledge of reading and 
writing and the consequent use of written contracts 
of lease. It is similar to the ancient custom of 
" livery of seizen " whereby possession was given 
on the premises by the delivery of a piece of the 
sod or turf. 



THE MARYLAND PALATINATE 187 

Interesting records of a court leet and court 
baron, held at St. Clement's Manor, at intervals 
from 1659 to 1672, preserved in the collection of 
the Maryland Historical Society, which show the 
nature of the cases disposed of, and the amounts 
of fines imposed, were printed with Mr. John 
Hemsley Johnson's paper on " Old Maryland 
Manors,'' published in 1883 among the Johns 
Hopkins University Studies in Historical and 
Political Science.^ 

As the country became more thickly populated, 
and many of the old manors were destroyed by 
partition and sale of the land, the manorial courts 
were gradually discontinued, and all matters of 
dispute were brought within the jurisdiction of 
the magistrates or the county courts. 

The labor in Maryland was from the begin- 
ning of the colony supplied by what were called 
"indented servants," who later come to be known 
as " redemptioners." These were persons who, 
desiring to go to the new world, bound themselves, 
in consideration of their passage money being paid 
for them, to serve the person by whom it was 
advanced, or some one else as his assignee, for a 
term of years, generally four or five. At the end 
of that period, the servant became a freeman, and 
was entitled to receive from his former master fifty 
acres of land, besides clothing, and tools for farming. 

^ Johns Hopkins University Studies in Historical and Political 
Science, Series I, No. 7, p. 31. 



188 THE LORDS BALTIMORE AND 

The persons who came out in this manner included 
all sorts and conditions of men, — mere laborers, 
who never could be anything else under the most 
favorable conditions, and also some men of educa- 
tion and refinement, who found in this arrangement 
the only way open to them for seeking their fortunes 
in the new world, and who afterwards attained to 
places of importance and influence in the Province. 
Women also came to Maryland in this manner, — 
many of them with a past that were best not enquired 
into ; but others with reputations free from reproach. 
Among them was a niece of Daniel Defoe, said to 
have fled from the prospect of a distasteful marriage 
that had been arranged for her. This explanation 
on the part of women, for their emigration, was not 
unusual ; but sometimes it was true ; and in this 
case there seems no cause to doubt its truth. She 
married the son of the farmer to whom she was 
bound as a servant. The principal incident in 
Miss Johnston's novel, " To Have and to Hold,'' is 
therefore not without precedent in actual fact. 

In a pamphlet entitled "A Character of the 
Province of Maryland," ^ published in 1666, the 
author, George Alsop, who was himself an indented 
servant in Maryland, gives an account of his experi- 
ence which would indicate that the lot of persons so 
placed was not a severe one. The labor exacted 
was not excessive, the maintenance sufficiently com- 

^3fd. Hist. Soc, Fund Pub., No. 15. (Eeprint, 1880.) 



THE MARYLAND PALATINATE 189 

fortable, and in winter, when planting operations 
were interrupted, abundance of leisure for hunting 
was allowed. It is true the position was still that 
of a servant, and the bondsman could not go and 
come as he pleased. In going abroad he was 
required to have a written pass from his master, and 
absence without leave was punished by prolongation 
of the term of servitude. 

Before long a less desirable class of labor was 
introduced into the colony. It was perceived in 
England that by sending convicts to the colonies 
and selling them for terms of servitude, in lieu of 
sentence to jail, the expense of their maintenance 
would be saved. As a consequence of this policy 
large numbers of this class were transported to the 
American colonies during the eighteenth century. 
One writer, in the Maryland Gazette of July 30, 
1767, puts the number sent to Maryland as high 
as six hundred a year during the preceding thirty 
years, which would make a total of eighteen 
thousand during that period ; but these figures 
are probably exaggerated.^ The importation of 
this class was strongly resented in the Province, 
and efforts were made to restrain it by the impo- 

^ It is not to be supposed that this large number of convicts 
became absorbed in the population of Maryland. A large pro- 
portion of them, Avhen their term of transportation was ended, 
returned to England ; and of those who elected to remain in 
the new world, many sought homes in other colonies where 
they would not be known as ex-convicts. 



190 THE LORDS BALTIMORE AND 

sition of duty and special taxes upon convicts, and 
in addition, purchasers of convict servants were 
required to give security for their good behavior ; ^ 
but these efforts to restrict the shipments failed 
in effect for the reason that the convicts were 
sent out under authority of Acts of Parliament 
which the Province was powerless to defeat. It 
must not be imagined that these persons were the 
worst of felons. They were mostly convicted for 
lesser crimes, larceny and forgery being among the 
worst. In fact, it is said that after Culloden, large 
numbers were transported as convicts whose only 
offense was that they had espoused the forlorn 
cause of the house of Stuart. Under the san- 
guinary criminal code of the time, a much larger 
number of crimes were punishable by death than 
under present laws, and those convicted of capital 
crimes were not often transported. It was cheaper 
to hang them. 

It was not until after the beginning of the 
eighteenth century, when by the treaty of Utrecht 
the traffic in African slaves passed under English 
control, that there was any great number of negro 
slaves in Maryland. But from that time the 
increase was rapid. The trade was stimulated 
from England, and Lord Baltimore (Charles, fifth 
Baron,) encouraged it. The effect upon the white 
servants was damaging. The negroes were slaves 

ijfd Archives: Proc. of Council, 1671-1681, p. 136. 



THE MARYLAND PALATINATE 191 

for life, and their children after them ; while the 
white servant was a bondsman for but a few years 
at best, and therefore, as having the less permanent 
value, received the less consideration. At this period 
the condition of the indented servant, brought into 
competition with slave labor, was described as miser- 
able indeed. 

In 1708 there was published in London by 
Ebenezer Cook, a satire in burlesque verse, entitled 
the " Sot-weed Factor ^^ ^ giving an account of a visit 
to Maryland and Annapolis. By sot-weed, tobacco 
is meant. This writer^s report both of the place 
and of the people is very far from flattering. Upon 
landing at Pascataway he declares there 

" soon repair' d a numerous Crew, 

In Shirts and Drawers of Scotch-cloth Blue. 
With neither Stockings, Hat nor Shooe. 
These Sot-weed Planters Crowd the Shoar, 
In Hue as tawny as a Moor." 

According to this traveller, upon crossing to the 
opposite side of the river, he was soon accosted by 
a youth driving home some cattle who asks " from 
whom he'd run away ? '^ To be taken for a runaway 
servant was more than he could stand with equan- 
imity, and he forthwith brandished his sword. But a 
soft answer turned away wrath, and he was presently 
conducted to the house of the planter, nearby, where 

^ Early Maryland Poetry. Md. Hist. Soc. , Fund Publication, 
No. 36. (Keprint, 1900.) 



192 THE LORDS BALTIMORE AND 

hospitable eutertainment was offered, his host con- 
siderately refraining from asking whether he came 
from jail or college, and generously assuring him 
that he was welcome in either case. Then follows 
an account of various vicissitudes that befell him 
during the night, including the invasion of his bed 
chamber by a wild fox in pursuit of some poultry 
which had previously been his room mates. 

He was next entertained at the house of a man 
of prominence, and learned that though methods 
might be primitive, good cheer and abundance of it, 
were to be had, and were most liberally dispensed. 

Eventually this chronicler arrives at Annapolis 
which he describes as 

'* A City Situate on a Plain, 
Where Scarce a House will keep out Kain ; 
The Buildings f ram' d with Cyprus rare, 
Eesembles much our Southwark Fair : 
But Stranger here will scarcely meet 
With Market-place, Exchange, or Street ; 
And if the Truth I may report, 
'Tis not so large as Tottenham Court." 

This account, with all its extravagancies of expres- 
sion, was written, it is to be observed, but shortly 
after the seat of government had been removed from 
St. Mary's to Annapolis. The former is said never to 
have contained more than sixty houses, and the latter 
had scarcely begun to be a town ; not many years 
were to elapse however before a very different report 
of its appearance and character was to be made by 



THE MARYLAND PALATINATE 193 

travellers from the old world. Unfavorable as were 
Mr. Cook's first impressions, he appears afterwards 
to have become a resident of Annapolis. 

Toward the middle of the eighteenth century a 
marked change was effected in the agricultural, and 
therefore in the commercial, conditions of Maryland, 
by the introduction of a new class of settlers. 
Hitherto the colonists, or inhabitants, with the 
exception of the negro slaves, had been for the most 
part of English or Irish descent. But now there 
began to arrive a few, and soon after, considerable 
numbers, of Germans from the Rhenish Palatinate, 
settlers who hence came to be called ^' Palatines." 
They were a sturdy, industrious people, and in 
view of the border disturbances resulting from the 
boundary disputes, and the exposure of the western 
portion of the Province to attack in the event of 
war with the French, Lord Baltimore (Charles, fifth 
Baron,) offered every encouragement to secure their 
settlement west of the mountains, upon the fertile 
lands of what are now Frederick and Washington 
counties. Special inducements in the way of exemp- 
tion from quit-rents for a term of years, and other 
concessions, were made to lead them to settle inland.^ 
These Germans soon found that it was not only on 
the borders of the Rhine, where nearly every vine-' 
clad hill is crowned with a ruined castle, — witness 

' Proceedings of the Council ; Liber M, folio 68. Md. Hist. 
Sac. Coll., portfolio 8, No. 14. Md. Hist. Soc, Calvert Papers, 
No. 2, p. 162. 
13 



194 THE LORDS BALTIMORE AND 

to the historic struggles between French and Ger- 
mans for the possession of that river, — that border 
warfare was to be encountered. They not only bore 
the brunt of the strife between Baltimore and the 
Penns about the disputed boundary line, but when, 
after Braddock's defeat, the Province was exposed 
to raids by the savage allies of the French, these 
western settlers were the greatest sufferers. It was 
not merely as defenders of the frontier that the 
Germans proved valuable acquisitions to Maryland. 
In the broad valleys in which they settled, to this 
day remarkable for productiveness, they quickly 
cleared away the forest, and introduced the thrifty 
husbandry of the German Fatherland.^ Maryland, 
— of which the agriculture had languished under an 
exclusive culture of tobacco, — now took on a fresh 
life, as its valleys were converted into teeming fields 
of wheat, a product which soon became an important 
item of export from the Province.^ 

Until the settlement of the Palatines in the valley 
between the Blue Ridge and the Alleghanies, the 
rivers and the bay had afforded the chief means of 
communication between the colonists, whether the 
trips were made for business or for pleasure. Of 
wagon roads or highways there were practically 
none. In the absence of cities, or even of any con- 

1 Many interesting facts concerning these German immi- 
grants are contained in First Settlements of Germans in Maryland, 
by E. T. Schultz. (Frederick, 1896.) 

* Mereness ; Maryland as a Proprietary Province, pp. 123-125. 



TME MARYLAND PALATINATE 195 

siderable town, what social intercourse there was, 
consisted chiefly of interchanges of visits between 
the families of planters ; and a liberal hospitality 
prevailed. The advent of visitors, whose arrival 
was announced merely by the approach of the skiff 
or bateau in which they came, to the private landing 
of the plantation, caused neither surprise nor incon- 
venience. With abundance of game at command, 
the larder of the well-to-do planter was always well- 
stocked. Alsop, already quoted, records that he 
had seen fourscore venison in the storehouse of his 
master, — and this for a family of seven persons. 
The guest was always welcome and provision for 
his entertainment was ample. 

There were, it is true, the rolling roads over 
which tobacco was brought to the nearest landing, 
and there were bridle paths in abundance ; but with 
the development of the farmlands beyond the 
mountains, a train of pack horses walking in single 
file would no longer serve to convey the country 
produce to market. The building of roads began, 
and was rapidly prosecuted; and before long the 
huge Conestoga wagon, with its team of four, six or 
eight horses, the housings of their collars surmounted 
by rows of tinkling bells to give notice of approach 
through the narrower and mountainous portions of 
the road, became the familiar vehicle for the convey- 
ance to market of the abundant products of the field. 

These wagons came in great numbers to Balti- 
more ; for the many abortive attempts of the As- 



196 THE LORDS BALTIMORE AND 

sembly to establish a city in the Province, at last 
found their successful outcome when in 1730 the 
town of Baltimore was established at the head of 
tidewater on the Patapsco Eiver. Many cities had 
been incorporated before that time, several of them 
with the name of Baltimore ; but it was not until 
this date, that the efforts to found a city destined to 
become a commercial metropolis, and a port for 
foreign trade, resulted in achievement. 

To this city the produce of the country naturally 
came for distribution and reshipment; and but a 
few years ago there remained as vestiges of the old 
times and methods, a number of inns in this city to 
which were attached great court-yards with ample 
stabling for the teams and wagons which a century 
ago brought to Baltimore a large part of the 
material for its domestic trade and foreign commerce. 
These old inns and court-yards are fast disappear- 
ing, — probably not more than three or four now 
remain, — deserted, and gradually falling to decay. 

Beside the planters and the farmers, the unsettled 
state of the border gave rise to another class of 
colonists, men to whom a life devoted to hunting 
and adventure proved more attractive than one en- 
gaged in the regular industry of agriculture. These 
were the frontier rangers. The rangers were main- 
tained as a sort of constabulary. They constituted 
the warders of the border, and acted as scouts to 
watch for and report the approach of hostile Indians, 
to maintain the boundaries claimed by the Pro- 



THE MARYLAND PALATINATE 197 

prietary, and incidentally, to take up runaway ser- 
vants and stray cattle. The mode of life which this 
occupation involved had its fascinations, and there 
naturally developed a class of backwoodsmen, — men 
who lived by the rifle, adopted the wild life and 
even the dress of the Indians, — whom they often 
surpassed in keenness of vision, unerring marksman- 
ship and knowledge of woodcraft, — with the accom- 
panying accomplishments of tracking and tracing 
quarry, whether it were game or foe. These back- 
woodsmen when they made their rare visits to 
Annapolis for the purchase of ammunition or other 
supplies, clad in their hunting costumes of deer skin, 
with fringed leggings, with faces browned by expos- 
ure, and not infrequently decorated with paint, after 
the fashion in personal adornment which prevailed 
among the Indians, had their vanity particularly 
gratified when, as sometimes occurred, they were 
themselves mistaken for savages. 

The lack of towns and marts, — the places where 
men do congregate, — greatly retarded the growth of 
any social or political life in Maryland. The social 
life was that of the home, almost domestic in its 
character, as friends visited, and were received and 
entertained by friends, in their widely scattered 
manor houses. There was no centre of reunion. 
Political life for the same reason was slow in 
developing. In fact, under the Proprietary gov- 
ernment during the earlier period, there was small 
scope for politics. Political strife is apt to be 



198 THE LORDS BALTIMORE AND 

engendered by the burdens of taxation ; but these 
were comparatively light, and mostly indirect. 
There were the quit-rents reserved upon grants of 
land, but these were not excessive and were matters 
of contract. The impost duties incidental to the 
export of tobacco or other produce were not onerous, 
although there were disputes as to the proper 
application of the resulting revenue, whether it 
belonged to the Province for public purposes, or 
was merely a source of private income of the 
Proprietary. Complaints there were in plenty about 
the fees exacted by, and paid to, public officers, 
appointees of the Proprietary, but these arose chiefly 
when it became evident that the holders of public 
places were becoming rich from the emoluments of 
their offices. Discontent on account of the tax 
imposed for the support of the clergy of the Church 
of England naturally resulted on the part of those 
who did not belong to that church, and the scanda- 
lous lives of some of the clergy were calculated to 
aggravate the discontent. Direct taxes, except the 
poll-tax, were few and rare, until they were imposed 
for purposes of defence or for meeting the requisitions 
of the crown. Then there appeared a disposition to 
tax everything upon which a tax could be imposed, 
from carriage-wheels to bachelors.^ It was not 
until taxes became burdensome, and at the same 
time a town with municipal activity had developed 

^Proceedings of the Assembly. L. H. J., July 20, 1754. 



THE MARYLAND PALATINATE 199 

at Annapolis, that a definite political life took 
shape. 

Educational opportunities in the Province were 
few and small. Among a widely scattered popula- 
tion, such as existed in the earlier days of the 
Province, the establishment of public schools was 
impossible. Nowhere was there sufficient density 
of population to provide within a convenient radius 
the number of pupils necessary for the support of 
such a school. The various efforts made for the 
establishment of a college or high school for a long 
time proved abortive on account of religious differ- 
ences. It was proposed at one time to form such a 
school with two head masters — one Protestant and 
the other Roman Catholic, but such an impracticable 
plan as that was sufficient to defeat the project. The 
rivalries between the eastern and western shores 
also operated to retard the execution of any scheme 
for higher education. This led to a proposition to 
establish two schools, one on each shore, the master 
of one to be a graduate of Oxford, and the master 
of the other, of Cambridge. But this scheme 
naturally fell to the ground. The efforts of Gov- 
ernor Francis Nicholson eventually resulted in the 
establishment of King William School at Annapolis, 
but it did not greatly flourish. After the Revolution 
it was merged with St. John^s College in that city. 

Meanwhile the people of Maryland did not go 
unlettered. Large numbers of the youth of the 
colony, the sons of wealthy parents, were sent 



200 THE LORDS BALTIMORE AND 

abroad for their education ; the Protestants to the 
great universities of England, those of Koman 
Catholic parentage to universities or seminaries upon 
the continent of Europe. Many others attended 
William and Mary College in Virginia, and still 
larger numbers the Academy, in Philadelphia. The 
educated men for the most part adopted the law as 
their profession. This fact tended somewhat to 
promote litigation ; but at the same time it supplied 
a class of men trained to discuss questions of public 
policy and of constitutional law, and to take their 
part with credit in the disputes that subsequently 
arose between the colonies and the mother country. 
The fame of some of the Maryland lawyers both 
for learning and ability extended not only to the 
other colonies, but to England as well. Included 
among their number were such men as Daniel 
Dulany, Charles Carroll of Carrollton, William 
Paca, Samuel Chase, and others of distinguished 
reputation.^ 

With the increase of wealth, and the growth of 
Annapolis, a mode of life very different from that 
which had prevailed at the middle of the seventeenth 
century was developed by the middle of the eigh- 
teenth. We hear ao more of the dwellings described 
by Ebenezer Cook, — "where scarce a house will 

^ An eloquent tribute to the distinguished abilities of Daniel 
Dulany (the younger), may be found in McMahon's Historical 
View of the Government of Maryland, Vol. i, pp. 354-355, notes 
18, 19. 



TME MARYLAND PALATINATE 201 

keep out rain/^ In their place were stately man- 
sions, built of brick, of fine architectural design, with 
spacious halls and wide extending wings. Many of 
them stand to-day and give to Annapolis its marked 
character as a typical colonial town. The Harwood, 
the Brice, the Carroll, the Paca, and the Chase 
mansions, the last named originally built by one of 
the Lloyds, are, among others, noteworthy examples 
and illustrations of the architecture of that period. 

In this town of Annapolis there was not only 
wealth ; there were also culture, and refinement and 
gaiety, and no little extravagance and dissipation. 
The favorite pastimes of the young gentry, the 
gilded youth of the time, were cock-fighting, card- 
playing, fox-hunting and horse-racing. There were 
several social clubs, and, for the encouragement 
of the breeding of race horses, a jockey club was 
formed. William Eddis, who, in 1769 and for 
several years thereafter, was surveyor of customs at 
Annapolis, wrote entertaining letters describing the 
social conditions; in one dated Nov. 2, 1771, he 
said : — " Our races which are just concluded, con- 
tinued four days and aiforded excellent amusement 
to those who are attached to the pleasures of the 
turf; and surprising as it may appear, I assure 
you that there are few meetings in England better 
attended or where more capital horses are exhibited.'^ ^ 

The Abbe Robin, a chaplain with the French 

^ Eddis, Letters from America, p. 106. 



202 TEE LORDS BALTIMORE AND 

troops serving in the Revolutionary Army, wrote : 
" As we advance toward the south we find percep- 
tible differences, both in customs and manners. The 
houses are no longer placed, as in Connecticut, at 
the road-side, at short intervals, limited to a space 
sufficient for the accommodation of a single family, 
and furnished with the merest necessaries ; they are 
spacious habitations, widely separated, composed of 
a number of buildings and surrounded by planta- 
tions extending farther than the eye can reach, 
cultivated, not by free labor, but by black men 
whom European avarice brings hither for gain from 
the burning coasts of Africa. Their furniture is of 
the most costly wood, and rarest marbles, enriched 
by skillful and artistic work. Their elegant and 
light carriages are drawn by finely bred horses, and 
driven by richly apparelled slaves. We especially 
observe this opulence in Annapolis. This very 
small town, situated at the mouth of the river 
Severn, where it empties into the bay, consists for 
three-fourths of fine buildings. The luxury of the 
women here surpasses that in our own provinces ; 
a French hair-dresser is a man of importance ; one 
of these ladies pays a salary of one thousand crowns 
to her coiffeur. There is already here a theatre, and 
the State House is of the greatest beauty, handsomer 
than any other in America. The portico is adorned 
with columns, and the edifice surmounted by a dome.^' ^ 

^L'Abbd Robin, Nouveau Voyage dans V Amerique Septentrion- 
ale, etc., p. 51. 



THE MARYLAND PALATINATE 203 

Eddis, already referred to, wrote in 1770 : — "I 
am persuaded there is not a town in England of the 
same size as Annapolis which can boast a greater 
number of fashionable and handsome women, and 
were I not satisfied to the contrary, I should suppose 
that the majority of our belles possessed every 
advantage of a long and familiar intercourse with 
the manners and habits of London. During the 
winter, there are assemblies every fortnight; the 
room for dancing is large ; the construction elegant, 
and the hall illuminated to great advantage. At 
each extremity are apartments for the card tables." ^ 
In another letter, dated in December 1771, he 
wrote, " The quick importation of fashions from the 
mother country is really astonishing. I am almost 
inclined to believe that a new fashion is adopted 
earlier by the polished and affluent Americans, than 
by many opulent persons in the great metropolis ; 
nor are opportunities wanting to display superior 
elegance ; we have varied amusements and numerous 
parties. It is but justice to confess, that the 
American ladies possess a natural ease and elegance 
in the whole of their deportment ; and that while 
they assiduously cultivate external accomplishments, 
they are still anxiously attentive to the more 
important embellishments of the mind. In con- 
versation they are generally animated and enter- 
taining, and deliver their sentiments with affability 
and propriety."^ 

^Eddis, Letters from America, p. 31. 
^Ibid., pp. 112-113. 



204 THE LORDS BALTIMORE AND 

It will be seen from these accounts, that this 
polished society did not lack for gaiety. There 
were public balls, both at Annapolis, and at Upper 
Marlboro,^ in Prince George's County, whither the 
guests from Annapolis drove in their coaches. Of 
these, and of elegant chariots and sedan chairs, there 
was abundance. Fifty coaches would be drawn up 
about the race course near Annapolis, at a time when 
it was said that there were not more than ten or 
twelve four-wheeled carriages owned in the City of 
Philadelphia.^ 

At Annapolis, too, was established the first theatre 
in America. It stood apparently on Church Circle, 
on land provided by the Vestry of St. Anne's 
Parish,^ and was opened in 1752 by a performance 
given by Hallam and Henry's troupe. This com- 
pany, which was brought over from England, 
contained a number of good actors, and presented 
an excellent selection of tragedies and comedies. It 
continued to play at Annapolis and Upper Marlboro 
for more than twenty years, and Miss Hallam, the 
leading lady of the company, seems, — to judge from 
the odes and verses dedicated to her, and extolling 
her charms, which appeared in the Maryland Gaz- 
ette, — to have been much admired by the youth of 
the period. Maryland was not only the cradle, but 
it continued for some time to be the nursery of the 



^Scharfs History of Maryland. Vol. ii, p. 86. 
2JZ)td, p. 96. 3 77,^-^,^ pp, 85, 98. 



THE MARYLAND PALATINATE 205 

theatre in America. In McMaster's History, there 
is an interesting account of the patronage given to 
the drama in Baltimore, at a time subsequent to 
the Revolution, when the theatre was discounte- 
nanced, if not prohibited, in New York, Philadelphia 
and Boston.^ It appears however from an allusion 
in one of Eddis's letters that there was a theatre 
in Philadelphia in 1773.' 

The pictures of life at Annapolis drawn in the 
pages of a recent work of fiction are evidently not 
exaggerated ; and unhappily, the picture presented in 
the same book of a certain type of clergyman, is like- 
wise not overdrawn. Mention has been made of the 
class of men upon whom Frederick, Lord Baltimore, 
conferred church livings in Maryland. There was 
no adequate ecclesiastical authority in the Province 
to maintain and administer discipline; and while 
there were here and there earnest and devout 
rectors, who sought to do their whole duty, and 
deplored the existing evils which they were power- 
less to correct, they formed a minority. The 
notorious Bennett Allen, who is introduced as one 
of the characters in ^' Richard Carvel,^' was inducted, 
in 1768, in compliance with the insistent demands 
of Lord Baltimore for his promotion, to the bene- 
fice of All Saints' Parish in Frederick County, 
as successor to the learned and greatly esteemed 

^McMaster's History of the People of the United States, Vol. I, 
p. 83. "^ Eddis, Letters from America, p. 154. 



206 THE LORDS BALTIMORE AND 

Reverend Thomas Bacon. This was the richest 
parish in the Province. Allen had previously 
struggled hard, in defiance of the law against 
pluralities, to hold on to both the livings of St. 
Anne's and St. James' in Anne Arundel County. 
Upon the occasion of his attempting to take pos- 
session of All Saints', some of the congregation, 
indignant that so disreputable a rector should be 
forced upon them, attempted to expel him from 
the church during the progress of divine service ; 
whereupon this minister of the gospel of peace 
suspended the sacred office long enough to draw a 
pistol, and placing it to the head of the foremost, 
declared, with an oath, that he would shoot him.^ 
Some years later Allen killed one of the Dulanys 
in a duel, the latter having challenged him on 
account of a newspaper article grossly attacking 
the character of his distinguished brother, Daniel 
Dulany, to whose enmity Allen blindly attributed 
the persistent hostility which he encountered in 
Maryland.^ Another inducted rector spent the 
greater part of the twenty years of his incum- 
bency in jail. These are examples. There were 
others, of little, if any, better character. 

Several reports sent from the Province to the 
Bishop of London indicate that with such laxity on 
the part of the shepherds, many sheep went astray ; 

^ Md. Archives : Correspondence of Governor Sharpe, Vol. in, 
p. 502. 
^ Dictionary of National Biography. Article, Bennett Allen. 



THE MARYLAND PALATINATE 207 

and that in many places the prevailing standard of 
morality was not high. It is probable that this 
charge was in part, at least, justified by the facts. 

The brilliant and extravagant society at Annapo- 
lis at the middle of the eighteenth century presents 
a strong contrast to the frontier, or rather pioneer, 
conditions which existed a century before. The 
advertisements in the contemporary papers show 
that there were no fabrics, or articles of luxury, 
too fine or too costly, to find a market there. 

Wealth had increased; bnt all had not grown 
rich. As in many such instances, the rich had grown 
richer and the poor had grown poorer. It is not until 
after the beginning of the eighteenth century that 
the necessity for the establishment of county alms- 
houses appears to have arisen. Moreover the rapid 
acquisition of wealth had chiefly taken place among 
those who were connected more or less nearly with 
the family of the Proprietary, or were holders of 
public offices, paid by fees, which in course of time 
had become very lucrative to those who received 
them and correspondingly irritating to those by 
whom they were paid. It was in contemplation 
of such wealth, and the display of it, that the 
lower house of Assembly so bitterly and stubbornly 
resisted the imposition of taxes for the support of 
military operations unless they were accompanied 
by a diversion to the same purpose of a portion 
of the Proprietary's revenues, and a reduction of 
the fees of public officers. The people who paid 



208 THE LORDS BALTIMORE AND 

the taxes resented the prosperity of those that 
thrived upon them, and this condition was another 
element contributing to the accumulation of causes 
of discontent against Proprietary government and 
Crown alike. 

Such was the state of society in Maryland when 
the curtain at last falls upon the colonial period of 
her history. 

Events had been rapidly shaping themselves 
for the rupture with England ; a convention had 
been called, a Council of Safety and committees 
of observation appointed ; but the Proprietary 
government of Maryland came to an end without 
violence. Certain correspondence between Gover- 
nor Eden and the British Ministry having been 
captured by one of the vessels cruising under 
authority of the Continental Congress, that body 
directed Governor Eden's arrest. The Maryland 
Convention replied that the matter belonged to 
their own jurisdiction, and instead of arresting the 
Governor, notified him that he was at liberty to 
leave the Province with all his personal effects. 
A remonstrance from Virginia upon this course 
was sharply rebuked. 

It is to be noted as indicative of the deliberate 
and moderate action in Maryland, that when at last, 
an Act was passed to confiscate the property of 
absentee sympathizers with the royal cause, an 
exception was made in favor of Horatio Sharpe, the 
former Governor. He was allowed two years' time 



THE MARYLAND PALATINATE 209 

in which, either to sell his property, or become a 
citizen of Maryland and retain it. 

On June 26, 1776, Governor Eden sailed, unmo- 
lested, on a British ship, the Fowey, which came to 
Annapolis under flag of truce to take the Governor 
on board ; ^ and with his departure the last semblance 
even of the Proprietary government vanished. 

On July 3, 1776, one day before the adoption 
by the Continental Congress of the Declaration of 
the Independence of the United States, the delegates 
assembled in the Maryland Convention adopted 
their own declaration, in which, after reciting the 
encroachments upon the liberties of the people made 
by both King and Parliament, they announced 
their determination "to join with a majority of 
the united colonies in declaring them free and 
independent states.'' 

This act marked the close of the colonial period 
and of the old regime. 

The dawn of a new era began. 



^An account of the incidents attending Governor Eden's 
departure from Maryland is given in the Life and Administra- 
tion of Sir Robert Eden, by Bernard C. Steiner, Ph. D., Johns 
Hopkins University Studies in Historical and Political Science, 
Series xvi, Nos. 7, 8, 9, pp. 130-138. Also in Maryland 
Archives, Corr. of the Council of Safety, 1775-1776, pp. 511-521. 

14 



INDEX. 



Act concerning Religion, see Reli- 

' gious Toleration; Puritan legislation 
concerning religion in 1654, 93. 

Allen, Reverend Bennett, his disre- 
putable character, 205 ; violence 
attending his induction to All 
Saints' Parish, 206 ; kills the 
brother of Daniel Dulany in a 
duel, 206. 

Alsop, George, account of conditions 
in Maryland, 188, 195. 

Altham, Father John, Jesuit priest 
and missionary, 45. 

Andros, Sir Edmund, assumes gov- 
ernorship but retires, 132. 

Annapolis, made seat of government 
in 1694, 131 ; change in character 
of buildings, 200 ; iutroduction of 
beauty in architecture, 201; gaiety 
of the social life, 201 ; wealth and 
extravagance, 207. 

Ark, the, and the Dove, at Newfound- 
land, 16; departure from Isle of 
Wight with the Maryland colon- 
ists, 36 ; arrival in ttie Potomac, 
42, 174. 

Arundel, LadyAnne, wife of Cccilius, 
Lord Baltimore, 28. 

Arundel of Wardour, Lord, father 
of Lady Anne Arundel, wife of 
Cecilius, Lord Baltimore, 25. 

Assembly of Maryland, dispute with 
proprietary as to initiative, 49 ; 
attitude in respect to laws sub- 
mitted by the Proprietary, 70, 72; 
attempts to deprive Lord Balti- 
more of his revenues from duties 
and tonnage, 130 ; reply of lower 
house to petition from St. Mary's, 
132 ; changes in character during 
period of royal governors, 135; fail- 
ure of the council in 1701 to sub- 
stantiate charges made in 1689 
against proprietary government, 
136 ; resistance to demands of 
Crown for troops and money, 160; 
three companies furnished for ex- 
pedition against Cartagena, 161 ; 
• refusal to maintain troops after 
they had passed into service of the 
Crown, 161; reasons for refusing 
appropriations for expeditions 
against the French, 164. 



Associators, insurgents assumed 

government, 123; invoked royal 

intervention, 124. 
Avalon, Colony at, character of its 

charter, 14 ; disappointing results, 

17. 

Bacon's Rebellion in Virginia, causes 
of, 105. 

Baltimore, Baron of, title created, 
2, 14. 

Baltimore Town, its successful 
founding, 196; early became a 
mart of trade, 196. 

Bancroft, George, tributes to Mary- 
land legislation upon religion, 
86-87. 

Bennett, Richard, one of the com- 
mi.^sioners for the reduction of 
the plantations within the Bay 
of Chesapeake, 57. 

Blackistone, Nathaniel, royal gov- 
ernor, 1698, 134 ; requested to act 
as agent for the Assembly in 
England, 1-34. 

Boundary disputes ; conflict of 
boundaries between Maryland and 
Pennsylvania as defined, 112; as- 
tronomical observations as to loca- 
tion of boundary, 113 ; disputes 
revived after restoration of pro- 
prietary authority, 147; points in 
controversy, 148, 152 ; violi nee 
along the border, 150 ; extraordi- 
nary agreement, 152 ; Maryland's 
loss of territory, 155 ; agreement 
repudiated by Lord Baltimore, 157 ; 
Penns institute chancery proceed- 
ings, 157 ; final decision in 1750 ; 
argument of the Chancellor, 158. 

Bray, Reverend Thomas, Commis- 
sary of the Bishop of London, 96. 

Brent, Mistress Margaret, claims 
seat in Assembly, 53. 

Browning, Mrs. Louisa, sister of 
Frederick, Lord Baltimore, 142, 
169 ; institutes proceedings in 
chancery to assert her title to 
Maryland, 169 ; when case comes 
on for hearing, the Lord Chancel- 
lor refuses to proceed on account 
of existence of Eevolutionary 
War, 170. 

211 



212 



INDEX. 



Buckingham, Duke of, not favorable 
to Calvert as Secretary, 8 ; visit 
to Madrid, 13 ; his policy, 15 ; his 
death, 16. 

Calvert, Benedict Leonard, fourth 
Lord Baltimore, announces ad- 
herence to the Church of Eng- 
land, 138; applies to Queen for 
pension, 139 ; secures appointment 
of John Hart as governor, 139 ; 
death, 139 ; titular governor in 
1684 when but five years old, 118, 
139 ; married Lady Charlotte Lee, 
1699, 140; separated from her, 
1705, 140 ; member of Parliament, 
140 ; summary of character, 171. 
Calvert, Cecilius, second Lord Balti- 
more, grantee of charter of Mary- 
land,21, 29 ; date of birth and entry 
at Oxford, 28 ; date of marriage to 
Lady Anne Arundel, 29 ; expedi- 
tion for settlement of Maryland, 
85 ; Claiborne's hostility, 36 ; de- 
parture of the Ark and the Dove, 
36-37; letter of instructions to the 
colonists, 38 ; letter ia respect to 
claims of Jesuit missionaries, 47 ; 
review of life and character, 61 ; 
testimony of historians as to his 
character, 64 ; draft of laws pro- 
posed to Assembly, 70 ; attitude of 
Assembly, 72 ; entitled to credit 
for establishment of religious 
toleration, 83; his motives in 
so doing. 87 ; summary of charac- 
ter, 171. ■ 
Calvert, Charles, third Lord Balti- 
more, appointed governor, 60 ; 
statement of the motives of his 
father, Cecilius, in establishing 
religious liberty, 87; accession to 
title, 1675, 99 ; outlawed for high 
treason in Ireland, 100 ; King's 
warrant for reversal of outlawry, 
101 ; visits England in 1676, 102 ; re- 
turns to England in 1684, 117 ; lives 
in retirement, 125 ; review of char- 
acter, 125 ; first wife, Jane, widow 
of Henry Sewall, 128; thrice mar- 
ried, 128 ; death, 128, 138 ; his right 
to the revenues recognized and 
confirmed by the Crown, 130; with- 
draws son's allowance, 138 ; sum- 
mary of character, 171. 
Calvert, Charles, fifth Lord Balti- 
more, succeeds to title, 140 ; pro- 
prietary government restored to 
him, 140 ; married Mary, daughter 
of Sir Thomas Jannsen, 142; di- 
vorced, 142; visit to Frederick, 
Crown Prince of Prussia, 142 ; 



association with Frederick Lewis, 
Prince of Wales, 144 ; held vari- 
ous offices from him, 144; mem- 
ber of Parliament, 144 ; Fellow 
of the Eoyal Society, 144 ; Lord 
of the Admiralty, 144 ; makes 
extraordinary agreement with the 
younger Penns, 152; after visit to 
Maryland repudiates agreement, 
157 ; Penns institute chancery pro- 
ceedings, 157 ; final decision in 
1750 ; reasoning of the Chancel- 
lor, 158; summary of character, 
172. 

Calvert Coat of Arms, exemplifica- 
tion issued by Richard St. George, 
Norroy King of Arms, 3, 

Calvert, Frederick, sixth Lord Balti- 
more, succeeds to title, 158 ; birth ; 
guardians, 162; travels, and ven- 
tures in literature and science, 
162 ; comments of Laurence Sterne 
upon his character, 163 ; marriage, 
163; separation Irom his wife, 164; 
death of Lady Baltimore, 164 ; 
selfishness of his policy toward 
Maryland, 166 ; patron of disre- 
putable clergymen, 167; tried at 
Kingston upon charge of felony, 
167; acquitted on account of 
inconsistency in testimony, 168 ; 
but convicted by public opinion, 

168 ; death, 168 ; contempt for him 
shown at his funeral, 168 ; devises 
Maryland to his natural son, 
Henry Harford, to the exclusion of 
his sister, Mrs. Louisa Browning, 

169 ; summary of character, 172. 
Calvert, George, first Lord Balti- 
more, place and date of nativity, 
3 ; origin of ancestors, 4 ; entered 
Oxford, 4 ; member of Parliament, 
5 ; marriage, 5 ; clerk to the Privy 
Council, 5; knighted, 7; one of 
the two Secretaries of State, 7; his 
apparent sincerity in advocating 
the Spanish match, 11 ; conversion 
to Roman Catholic Church and 
resignation as Secretary of State, 
13 ; interest in American coloniza- 
tion, 14; venture in Newfound- 
land, 14; naval battle with French 
cruisers, 16 ; disappointing condi- 
tions at Avalon, 17; application 
for grant of country to the south, 
18 ; dissuaded by the King, Charles 
I., 18 ; visit to Jamestown, and re- 
ception there, 19 ; charter for Mary- 
land promised, 21; death, and 
review of character, 22 ; letter of 
sympathy to Wentworth, 25; sum- 
mary of character, 171. 



INDEX. 



213 



Calvert, John, Lord Baltimore, 
shown to be mythical, 99. 

Calvert, Leonard, father of George 
Calvert, 3. 

Calvert Leonard, son of George, Lord 
Baltimore, returns to England 
with prizes captured in Newfound- 
land, 16; appointed governor of 
Maryland, 38 ; suppressed Ingle's 
rebellion, 53 ; death, 53, 

Calvert, Philip, brother of Cecilius, 
Lord Baltimore, appointed gover- 
nor, and afterwards secretary, 60. 

Carlyle, Thomas, History of Fred- 
erick the Great ; mention of 
Charles, fifth Lord Baltimore, 143. 

Cartagena, expedition against. See 
Assembly of Maryland. 

Cecil, Sir Robert, patron of George 
Calvert, 5. 

Charles I., King of England, dis- 
courages George, Lord Baltimore, 
from plans of colonization, 18; 
grants charter of Maryland, 29. 

Charles IL, King of England, trib- 
ute of Indian arrows delivered to 
him in person, 1661, 64 ; eff"ect of 
his foreign policy, 107. 

Charter of Maryland, synopsis of its 
provisions, ^ comments upon its 
scope and character, 32. 

Church of England, established by 
law, 1692, 95, 129 ; clergy supported 
by taxation, 95, 129 ; act amended, 
1695, 1696, 1702, 96; character of 
the clergy, 97, 205. 

Claiborne, William, contest about 
possession of Kent Island, 43 ; at- 
tainted of treason, 45; stirs up 
sedition at Kent Island, 51 ; 
changes his political creed, 56; 
secures appointment as commis- 
sioner for the reduction of the 
plantations within the Bay of 
Chesapeake, 57. 

Clergy of the Church of England, 
scandalous character of some of 
those sent to Maryland, 205. 

Cloberry & Co., Claiborne's princi- 
pals in London, 44. 

Coinage, attempt of Cecilius, Lord 
Baltimore, to supply the lack of 
current money, 178. 

Collectors of Royal Customs, dis- 
putes with, 118. 

Complaint from Heaven, with a Hue 
and Cry, and a petition out of Vi?'- 
qinia and Maryland, quotations 
■from, 107. 

Conestoga wagons, the usual vehicle 
for transportation, 195; old inns, 
and court-yards built for their 



accommodation, now disappear- 
ing, 196. 

Convicts, transported from England 
to America, 126, 189. 

Convict labor, policy of England in 
sending convicts to the colonies, 
189 ; opposition on the part of pro- 
vincial government, 190. 

Coode, John, character, 122 ; leader 
of insurrection, 123 ; denied seat 
in Legislature, 132 ; flees to Vir- 
ginia under indictment, 133. 

Cook, Ebenezer, author of Sot-iveed 
Factor, 191, 193. 

Copley, Sir Lionel, royal governor, 
124 ; his administration, 129 ; 
death, 132. 

Copley, Thomas, Jesuit missionary, 
45 ; letter to Cecilius, Lord Balti- 
more, 46, 50. 

Cornwaleys, Thomas, commissioner 
for government of Province, 38; 
commander of vessel sent against 
Claiborne, 43 ; assists Richard 
Ingle in escaping from arrest, 51 ; 
departs with him for England, 51. 

Cotton, John, views as to religious 
toleration, 80. 

Counties Palatine, on the continent 
of Europe, 32 ; policy of William 
the Conquerer in relation thex'eto, 
33; palatinate authority of the 
Bishop of Durham, the measure of 
that of the Lords Proprietory of 
Maryland, 30, 34. 

Courts Baron, authorized by charter, 
184; ancient origin, 185; proceed- 
ings of Court at St. Gabriel's 
Manor, 186 ; proceedings of Court 
at St. Clement's Manor, 187. 

Courts Leet, origin and jurisdiction, 
185 ; record of proceedings at St. 
Clement's Manor, 187. 

Cresap, Thomas, stout borderer, 150 
taken prisoner to Philadelphia, 151. 

Crossland, Alicia, mother of George 
Calvert, first Lord Baltimore, 3. 

Currency, first issue of paper money 
in the Province, 179. See Coinage 
and Tobacco. 

Davis, William, and Pate, John, lead- 
ers of insurrection, 110; hanged, 111. 

Dove, the (pinnace). See A7-k and 
Dove. 

Eddis, William, surveyor of customs 
at Annapolis, 201 ; letters from 
America, 201 ; describes gaiety of 
Annapolis society, 203. 

Eden, Robert, married Caroline, 
younger sister of Frederick, Lord 



214 



INDEX. 



Baltimore, 169 ; appointed gover- 
nor of Maryland, 169 ; retires from 
Province, 170 ; departure for Eng- 
land, 209. 

Education, conditions during earlier 
period, 199 ; efforts to establish a 
high school and their failure, 199; 
King William School, 199; Mary- 
land youth educated at European 
universities, and in neighboring 
colonies, 200. 

Egerton, Lady Diana, daughter of 
the Duke of Bridgewater, 163 ; 
married to Frederick, Lord Balti- 
more, 163 ; separated from her 
husband, 164; death, 164. 

Evelyn, George, attorney for Clo- 
berry & Co., supersedes Claiborne, 
as their agent, 44 ; Commander of 
Kent Island, 44. 

Fendall, Josias, appointed governor 
and proves a traitor, 59. 

Fraudulent Map, with Cape Hen- 
lopen falsely located, 153. 

Frederick, Crown, Prince of Prussia, 
estimate of Charles, fifth Lord 
Baltimore, 142, 143. 

Frederick, the Elector Palatine, ac- 
cepts crown of Bohemia, and risks 
his hereditary domain, 12. 

Frederick Lewis, Prince of Wales, 
friend and patron of Charles, fifth 
Lord Baltimore, 144. 

Fuller, William, Puritan settler at 
Providence, 57 ; one of the Council 
of Government under commission 
of Parliament, 57 ; treacherously 
kills prisoners of war, 58. 

General Assembly. See Assembly of 
Maryland. 

German settlers, established west 
of the Blue Pddge Mountains, 193 ; 
encountered border warfare, 193 ; 
introduced new system of agricul- 
ture, 194; established roads and 
highways, 195. 

Gladstone, William E., views ex- 
pressed as to toleration in Mary- 
land, 82, 83, 84. 

Gondomar, Count, Spanish Ambas- 
sador, 9 ; accused of bribing 
Sir George Calvert, 9, 10 ; his skill 
and influence, 11 ; said to have 
convened Calvert to the Roman 
Catholic faith, 23, 

Goodman, Godfrey, Bishop of Glou- 
cester, reference to his History of 
the Court of King James I. , 23, 29. 

Great Seal of Maryland, 141. 

Greene, Thomas, governor, 53 ; pro- 



claims Charles IL, King, and is 
removed from office, 56. 

Harford, Henry, natural son of 
Frederick, Lord Baltimore, 169 ; 
devisee of the Province of Mary- 
land, 169 ; proclaimed proprietary, 
169. 

Hart, John, royal governor, 1714, 
135 ; recommissioned governor for 
the proprietary, 1715, 141. 

Hatton, Thomas, secretary of the 
Province : accepts otfice under the 
commissioners of Parliament, 57. 

Hawley, Thomas, commissioner for 
government of Province, 38. 

Herman's map, made in 1670, pub- 
lished in 1673, 154. 

Hervey, Lord, estimate of Charles, 
fifth Lord Baltimore, 143. 

Holt, Lord Chief Justice, remark- 
able opinion rendered by, 124, 129. 

Indented servants, 126 ; terms of 
contract, 187 ; condition of such 
servants in 17th century, 188. 

Indians, friendly negotiations with 
Pascataways, 42 ; outbreak of 
northern Indians in 1676, 102. 

Indian Arrows, yearly tribute for the 
Maryland Province, 32; receipts 
for their delivery at Windsor 
Castle, 63. 

Ingle, Hichard, arrested at St.Mary's 
and escapes, 51 ; invasion and 
rebellion, 5:?. 

Insurrection in Maryland, led by 
Davis and Pate, 110. 

James I., King of England, favor- 
able to George Calvert, 6; capri- 
cious character, 8. 

James II., King of England, as 
Duke of York gives William Penn 
deed for Delaware, 117, 148 ; quo 
ivarranto proceedings instituted to 
annul charter of Maryland, 117; 
defeated by downfall of James, 118. 

Jannsen, Mary, daughter of Sir 
Thomas Jannsen, 142 ; married to 
Charles, fifth Lord Baltimore, 142 ; 
divorced, 142. 

Jesuits, controversies with Cecilius, 
Lord Baltimore, 45 ; claim as to 
supremacy of canon law. 46; re- 
fusal to take part in legislation, 51. 

Johnson, Geu'l Bradley T., opinion 
as to origin of act concerning re- 
ligion, 85. 

Kent Island, inhabitants dependent 
upon supplies from without, 43; 



INDEX. 



215 



trading post established there 
prior to the settlement of Mary- 
land, 174. 

Lake, Sir Tbomas, George Calvert's 
predecessor as one of the princi- 
pal Secretaries of State, 7. 

Landing of Colonists, 42, 174; nature 
of country, 175 ; modes of com- 
munication, 175; abundance of 
game, 176. 

Lee, Lady Charlotte, wife of Bene- 
dict Leonard, Lord Baltimore, 140 ; 
divorced, 1-10; daughter of Earl of 
Litchfield, 140; grand-daughter of 
Charles II. and Barbara Palmer, 
Duchess of Cleveland, 140. 

Lloyd, Edward, President of the 
Council, and acting governor, 1701 
and 1709, 134, 135. 

McMahon, John V. L., opinion of the 
Maryland charter, 29. 

Markham, William, Penn's deputy, 
112; avoids determination of boun- 
dary, 114. 

Mason and Dixon, final survey of 
boundary between Maryland and 
Pennsylvania, 159. 

Mathews, Sir Toby, schoolmate of 
George, Lord Baltimore, became a 
Jesuit, 24. 

More, Father Henry, Provincial of 
Jesuit Society in England ; influ- 
ence in settling disputes between 
Lord Baltimore and the mission- 
aries, 48 ; adviser of Cecilius, Lord 
Baltimore, 84. 

More, Sir Thomas, views upon 
religious liberty expressed in 
Utopia, 85. 

Morton, Sir Albert, successor of 
George Calvert as principal Sec- 
retary of State, 13. 

Mynne, Anne, daughter of John 
Mynne, married George Calvert, 
first Lord Baltimore, 5 ; death, 15. 

Naunton, Sir Robert, George Cal- 
vert's colleague as principal Sec- 
retary of State, 7. 

Nicholson, Francis, royal governor, 
1693, 132; character, 133 ; interest 
in education, 133, 134. 

Notley, Thomas, deputy governor, 
102, 110. 

Palatines. See German settlers. 

Pate, John. See Davis and Pate. 

Penn, William, grant of Pennsyl- 
vania, 111 ; conflict of boundaries, 
112 ; correspondence with Lord 
Baltimore, 112 ; correspondence 



with Maryland settlers, 112 ; astro- 
nomical observations as to bound- 
ary, 113; eagerness for outlet on 
the Chesapeake,115 ; extraordinary 
proposals made to Lord Baltimore, 
115-116 ; acquires deed to Delaware, 
117 ; procures institution of quo 
ivarranfo jsroceedings to annul 
the Maryland charter, 117; efforts 
defeated by downfall of James II., 
118. 

Political changes ; result of a quarter 
of a century of the suspension of 
the proprietary authority, 145; 
privileges guaranteed in charter, 
145 ; eftect of constitutional change 
in England seen in new light, 
146 ; disposition to extend opera- 
tion of English law to Maryland, 
147. 

Political life, growth retarded by 
absence of towns, 197; developed 
by increase in taxation, 198; and 
the rise of a municipal organiza- 
tion, 199. 

Puritans, in Virginia, 54-55; settle- 
ment in iSlaryland, 55 ; dissatisfied 
with religious liberty, 56, 

Quakers, restrictive orders concern- 
ing, 91, 

Rangers, maintained as constabu- 
lary, 196; emulated savages in 
costume and appearance, 197. 

Rapin de Thoyras, reference to his 
History of England, 10. 

Redemptioners. See Indented ser- 
vants. 

Religious Toleration, policy of Ce- 
cilius, Lord Baltimore, 66 ; procla- 
mation on the subject, 67 ; punish- 
ment for violations, 68 ; oath pre- 
scribed for Governor Stone, 69 ; 
act concerning religion, 1649, 71 ; 
its principal features, 74 ; its prob- 
able authorship, 78 ; approved by 
Lord Baltimore as amended, 79 ; 
comparison with contemporary 
practice, 79 ; policy in Massachu- 
setts, 80 ; policy in Virginia, 81 ; 
order in respect to Summer Is- 
lands, 82 ; ordinance of 1647, 82 ; 
restrictions during sway of royal 
governors, 97. 

Restriction of suffrage, 106. 

Revolution, The American, prepara- 
tion for rupture with England and 
for war, 208 ; deliberate and moder- 
ate action in Maryland, 208; close 
of colonial period, 209. 

Revolution of 1689. See Associators. 



216 



INDEX. 



Eo bin, L' Abbe, chaplain with French 
troops in the revohitionary army, 
202 ; description of Annapolis, 202. 

Roman Catholics, prohibited from 
voting by commissioners of Par- 
liament, 58; restrictions upon, 97 ; 
rumors as to conspiracy, 122. 

Rolling roads, their origin and use, 
181. 

Rousby, Christopher, collector of 
customs, killed by George Talbot, 
119. 

St. Claude (ship), loaned to George, 
Lord Baltimore, 17, 20. 

St. Mary's, City of petition against 
removal of seat of government, 131. 

Sewall, Jane, widow of Henry Sewall, 
daughter of Vincent Lowe, married 
Charles, third Lord Baltimore, 128. 

Seymour, John, royal governor, 1704, 
134 ; his addriess to Roman Catholic 
priests brought before him, 134 ; 
attempts to grant charter to An- 
napolis, 134 ; finally secures one 
from the Assembly, 135 ; death, 135. 

Slaves,— African, importation of 
African slaves to the American 
colonies insignificant until after 
treaty of Utrecht, 190 ; effect upon 
white labor, 191. 

Smith, Thomas, commander under 
Claiborne, arrested, 43 ; con- 
demned to death for piracy, 45. 

Sot-weed Factor, (in verse), descrip- 
tion of social conditions, 191 ; 
description of Annapolis, 192, 

Spanish Match, negotiations con- 
cerning, 9 ; Calvert's advocacy, 9; 
termination of negotiations, 13. 

Stone, William, first Protestant 
governor of Maryland, 54 ; oath 
of office required of him, 54; 
accepts ofl&ce from the commission- 
ers of Parliament, 57 ; reasserts 
authority of the proprietary, 58 ; 
defeated by Fuller and cast into 
prison, 58. 

Talbot, George, president of board 
of deputy governors, 118 ; kills 
Christopher Rousby, a collector of 
royal revenues, 119; delivered to 
Virginia authorities, 119 ; re- 
manded to England for trial, 120 ; 



escapes from jail, 120 ; condemned 
to death at Jamestown, 120 ; par- 
doned, 120. 

Theatre, first in America established 
at Annapolis, 204; patronage of 
the drama in Maryland, 205. 

Tilliferes, French Ambassador, trib- 
ute to George Calvert's integrity 
of character, 10. 

Tobacco, early became a staple pro- 
duct, 177 ; its use as currency, 177 ; 
.' 3rproduction, 177, 180; lack of 
ports for shipment, 181 ; method of 
rolling hogsheads to landings, 181 ; 
efforts to restrain production, 182 ; 
opposition to restriction, 182 ; con- 
tention on account of fees of public 
officers, 183; compromise effected, 
183. 

Truman, Major Thomas, treacher- 
ously kills Indian envoys, 103 ; 
impeached by the Assembly, 103 ; 
but escapes panishment by that 
body, 104 ; punished by Lord Bal- 
timore, 104, note. 

Utopia, described as a place of relig- 
ious liberty, 85. 

View of Frank Pledge, probable 
origin of term, 185. 

Vital statistics, comparison of the 
duration of life of the several 
Lords Baltimore, 172, 173. 

Walpole, Horace, estimate of Charles, 
fifth Lord-Baltimore, 143. 

Wentworth,Lord,letter from George, 
Lord Baltimore, to, 25. 

Wharton, Jesse, deputy governor, 
102. 

White, Father Andrew, Jesuit priest 
and missionary, 45; account of 
voyage to Maryland, 42, 175. 

William and Mary, accession to the 
throne, 120 ; delayed proclamation 
in Maryland, 120 ; royal governor 
appointed, 124 ; recognition of, in 
Maryland, 129. 

Winthrop, Johu,views as to religious 
toleration, 80. 

Women, immigrants to America, 
causes assigned for leaving Eng- 
land, 188 ; their fate not always 
adverse, 188. 



LB 78 



^ 









-^ V' 




A^' '/-v. 


^^.^ 


r. ^ ' " ^ 



^ jO 



\^^ '^ 









H^/^oTo^' V^#* 






% .-' 



^■^' . 



-^^^ / 



A^'^'.^ 









0-' 9. 



:\ 



\ 

^ .0^' 



^"^ -^ 






<P' 



^^ 








V 


* a", 


1 \ * 


0^^ 




% 


/ 






•x^" 




'I-' 




1 


« -? 


-^o 



o 0' 



'o^ *- 



o' ^'?-' 



c^. 









^^ 



"^^ /■'' 
^<i^ ° 

.^^^^/. = 



.0 o 










vl';' 






^v 



^^. -^ , X -^ ^O^ 



^ 






? • .0 . 






..^^^ 



,\^^' 'V 















^,..,^:^*o.o> ^^ 



* .(V 






s"^^- 






■^c^ 






% 



oo^ 



:,/- -e^ .'^■^ -^^^^^fe^". -^^ 



\%^- 



<. 






,0 o. ■> ^ 



*""^0'^ o'/^>o'^'-'v^^' 




^ " 


'-'^.P 


f 




,/ 


% 







'^'^ .<^^^ 









\ ^'^yi^^ ^> ^' 









v^r;T:^v 












' ' o 



"^^ .# 



->- * 8 M 



,'^' 



^V\ 



ct-^ * t. ^ A «> 















H '7^ 



LIBRARY OF CONGRESS 




009 842 514 7 













• •' .".' '»•.», 



.v,';:Av'';»>i^V>V. - 



